I / THE LIFE HORACE GREELEY, FOUNDER OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE, EXTENDED NOTICES OF MANY OF HIS CONTEM PORARY STATESMEN AND JOURNALISTS. BY L. D. INGERSOLL. PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY. UNION PUBLISHING COMPANY: 335 W ABASH AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 179 W. FOURTH ST., CINCINNATI, O. NEW YORK CITY. A. L. BANCROFT Co., SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. ET4 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by E. s. DEGOLYER, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. HARDER, LUSK & Co., STBREOTYPERS, 139 and 141 Monroe St. THE LAKESIDE PRESS, PRINTERS, Clark and Adams Sts. M199346 PREFACE. Soon after the death of HORACE GREELEY, I was invited to write a biography of him by the manager Mr. E. S. DeGolyer of the Union Publishing Company, of Chicago. That gentleman happened to know that I had occupied much time for many years in studies preparatory to the composition of a historical work upon American politics, and kindly judged that I might be already familiar with most of the events of Mr. Greeley s life. He was also good enough to say that he believed, if I should undertake to compose the work, I would write it in a spirit of friendship for Mr. Greeley, and also in that of impartiality and independence. Not- withstanding the generous manner in which I was approached upon the subject, I declined to receive any proposition, stating that a life of HORACE GREELEY would be best written by a friend whose name I gave, and who now occupies a distinguished position in journalism ; and this in conse quence of Mr. Greeley s wise appreciation of surpassing talents. But I finally yielded to the arguments which were urged in behalf of a biography of the Great Editor, by one who was his friend, but not so over- partial an admirer as to love all his admirers and detest all who were his opponents ; and who might be able to construct a work which would do justice to the life, character, genius of Mr. Greeley, and be acceptable to many general readers. The result is herewith submitted to the public. And, I do most candidly confess, with unaffected diffidence. For I have not written so much for scholars and men of letters as for the people, of whom HORACE GREELEY was one. He was never at ease in polite society ; or, it might with more exactness, perhaps, be stated, polite society never was at ease with him. He was ever making himself vulnerable to criti cisms of etiquette. In delineating his life I shall, perhaps, be guilty of a like offense. I do not say this to deprecate criticism, but only to ask a candid examination of the object with which the volume has been written. My design has been to so construct the work that it would present a con nected series of portraits of Mr. Greeley, in his multiform manifestations of character and genius, rather than a strictly chronological account of his life, whereby the unity of time would be preserved in the penalty of a succession of broken pictures. I have also endeavoured to present him as he was ; not a single character in a monologue, but surrounded by friends and encompassed by opponents; he and they fulfilling their destinies together id, in friendship or in antagonism, controlling events and making history. PREFACE. Mr. Greeley, though a man of the people, was a reformer, a politician, a statesman, a leader. He was noted as a philanthropist, a lecturer, a public speaker, a journalist, an author. In one way or another, he impressed his influence upon most of his countrymen, and upon much of his country s wisest legislation. Of a man so remarkably one of themselves, the people will naturally desire to learn as much as they can, as soon as they can. If I have in this work presented them with the true outlines of a life of beautiful simplicity, of real grandeur, of vast influence in behalf of the elevation and happiness of all men ; and have also shown how he was helped by those with whom he laboured, and how many of his desired reforms were retarded by those who opposed, if I have succeeded in truly picturing forth the life of a good, a great, and an honest man, though not a perfect character, and in causing any considerable number of men to do justice to one whom party necessities unjustly overwhelmed in one of the most melancholy disasters of our Republic s history, my labours will not have been in vain. THE AUTHOR CHICAGO, May, 1873. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. HORACE GREELEY S BIRTH ANCESTRY BOYHOOD. Birth of Horace Greeley Ancestry; Father, Grandfather, Great-grand father His Mother, Mary Woodburn Her Energy, Stories, Good Nature The Woodburn Family Of the Scotch-Irish Race The Puritans Fond of Fun Birth-place Learns to Read Books Upside Down First School Days A Prodigy at Spelling Hard Work on the Farm Old Fashioned New Hampshire Hospitality The Greeley Family sold outof House and Home. 17 CHAPTER II. APPRENTICESHIP. Removal of the Ruined Family to Vermont Poverty of the Manly American Sort Vermont Schools Horace Keeps a Sort of Night School An Omuiverous Reader "Clearing" Timber Lands Flea Knoll The Ague A Respected Poor Family Review of Farmer- Boy Life Horace chooses the Printer s Trade Apprenticeship at Poultney in the Northern Spectator Office Dramatic Account of the Contract Family Remove to Western Pennsylvania A Sad Part ing Horace as a Printer An Authority in Politics and General Knowledge Anecdotes An Excellent " Checker " Player His Uncouth Toilet Takes Down a "Swell" Sends His Earnings Home Journeys to Pennsylvania First Essays in Writing A Fugitive Slave-Chase Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence Learn ing a Trade Better than a College Education 31 CHAPTER III. A JOURNEYMAN PRINTER. Departure from Poultney Visits his Father Works as a Journeyman at Jamestown and Lodi, New York Chopping Wood Again Em ployed on the Erie (Pennsylvania) Gazette Offered a Partnership; CONTENTS. Declines Returns To His Father s In Vain Tries to Procure Work in the West Resolves to Go to New- York Divides his Earnings with his Father The Journey to New-York Arrival There with a Cash Capital of Ten Dollars Diligent Search for Work Sets up a "Lean" New Testament Chicken-pox Proof Varied Experience as a Journeyman in the Great City Steady Progress Visits New England Business on his own Account 51 CHAPTEE IY. SOCIAL MORALS FAITH POLITICS. Horace Greeley a^Born Reformer A New England Pioneer of Tem perance Opposition to the Use of Tobacco His Religious Faith His Own Statement as to How He Became a Universalist A Very Young Politician Discussion of the Slavery Question in 1819-20 An Anti-Slavery Boy The "Era of Good Feeling" Era of Per sonal-Preference Parties Election of John Quincy Adams to the Presidency The " Anti- Mason " Excitement Jackson Elected President in 1828 Defeat of Henry Clay in 1832 Horace Greeley Goes into Business for Himself. 62 CHAPTEE V. BUSINESS VENTURES IN NEW -YORK. Partnership with Francis V. Story A Bank Note Reporter and The Morning Post Failure of the Penny Daily Dr. Shepard Mr Schols Weathering the Storm Partner Drowned in East River Mr. Jonas Winchester, next Partner The New-Yorker The City Political Contest of 1834 Prints and Partially Edits a Campaign Paper A " Grahamite " Boarding - House Marriage Clay, Cal- houn, Crittenden Severe Struggle with the Hard Times of 1837 The New-Yorker Continued, though burdened by Debts Finally It Goes Up inTlame and Smoke 76 CHAPTEE VI. CHIEFLY OF THE "LOG -CABIN" CAMPAIGN. The Presidential Election of 1836 "Old Hickory" Greeley s Opinion of Martin Van Buren Thurlow Weed Calls en Mr. Greeley The Latter Induced to Take Charge of a " Campaign" Paper at Albany The Jeffersonian A Model Political > Organ " The Graves and Cilley Duel Success of the Whigs in New York State William H. Seward Elected Governor The Remarkable Presidential Campaign of 1840 The Harrisburgh Convention Nomination of General Har rison " Tippecanoe and Tyler Too " Log-Cabins and Hard Cider CONTENTS. Mr. Greeley Edits The Log - Cabin Newspaper Its Character Pro digious Success The Nation Aroused Notices of Some of the Most Noted Orators Triumph The Death of President Harrison Mr. Greeley Determines to Establish a Daily Journal in New -York 86 CHAPTEK VII. FOUNDER OF THE NEW -YORK TRIBUNE. Resume of Public Journalism up to the Time of the New- York Tribune The Partisan Press "Organs" Noted Party Editors: Isaac Hill, Thomas Ritchie, Edwin Croswell, Duff Green, Andrew Jackson, Amos Kendall, Francis P. Blair, John C. Rives; "The Kitchen Cabinet" The National Intelligencer Gales and Seaton Charles Hammond ; George D. Prentice New -York Journalism Goes to the Front The Six -Penny Journals William C. Bryant, James Watson Webb, and Other Journalists of the Old Regime The Cheap Press Ttye New- York Sun The Herald and Ja^ies Gordon Bennett The Herald Originally a Journal Without Principle A Newspaper Vacuum Thereby Caused Horace Greeley Establishes The Tribune, Price One Cent Its Early History Mr. Thomas McElrath Charaotcf of The Tribune Devoted to the Welfare of the People Welcomes All New Ideas Success -.. 102 CHAPTEE VIII. THE TRIBUNE HISTORY EDITORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. Early Successes of The Tribune Contest with/The Sun Henry J. Ray mond, First Assistant Editor Establishment ofThe Weekly Tribune Its Remarkable Suopess The Era of Newspaper Expresses Foreign News and Correspondence Distinguished Correspondents, at this Time and Afterwards, of The Tribune Bayard Taylor ; Margaret Fuller; Thomas Hughes; Emilio Castelar; M. D. Conway; G. W. Smalley; Kane O Donnell Notable Associate Editors of The Tribune Charles A. Dana; George Ripley; Solon Robinson; William H. Fry; George M. Snow ; and Others Hearty Accord of All with Mr. Gree- ley s General Views A Journal Earnestly Devoted to the Welfare of the People The Fenimore Cooper Libel Suits. 119 CHAPTEE IX. SOCIALISM AND OTHER " ISMS." Mr. Greeley s Socialism His Mature Views as Set Forth by Himself The Famous Discussion With Mr. Raymond The Etfect of Mr. Greeley s Supposed Opinions Upon New - York Journalism Estab lishment of The Times " Grahamism " Spiritualism Jenny Lind CONTENTS. Attends "the Kappings" at Mr. Greeley s House Summing up of His "Isms." 146 CHAPTEE X. FINAL DEFEAT OF HENRY CLAY. The Presidential Campaign of 1844 Henry Clay the Whig Candidate for President Other Candidates "The Clay Tribune" Mr. Greeley s Labours with Tongue and Voice George D. Prentice of the Louisville Journal An Animated Campaign Defeat Mr. Greeley Greatly Dis satisfied with the Result His Opinion of Henry Clay 160 CHAPTEE XI. CONTINUATION OF TRIBUNE HISTORY. The Tribune and Literature Inaugurates A New Era oj>Criticisin Ed gar A. Poe A High-Priced Autograph The Tribune Brings Out the Transcendentalists Margaret Fuller ; Her Contributions to the Trib une Mr. Greeley s Tribute to Her Genius Notices of American Female Journalists Charles Dickens Mr. Greeley s Early Recogni tion of his Genius His First Visit to America Washington Irving s "Break Down" at the Dickens Dinner Mr. Dickens s Second Visit Mr. Greeley Presides at the New- York Dinner A Notable Gathering Mr. Greeley s Great Services to Literature Contributions of Tribune Writers to Permanent Literature 108 CHAPTEE XII. ERA OF THE MEXICAN WAR GEN. TAYLOR, PRESIDENT. The Tribune from jpU to 1848 Its Era of Impressible Conflicts Rapid Review of its Battles Moves on to Aftfi-Slavery Its Hostility to the War with Mexico Enthusiastic Sfyjrfpathy with Popular Movements in Europe " Slieve-gammon " Tribune Office Burned Mr. Gree ley Visits the West The Presidential Campaign of 1848 Mr. Gree ley Dissatisfied with the Nomination of General Taylor Declines to Support the Ticket Speech at Vauihall Garden Nominated for Congress Taylor and Clay 188 CHAPTEE XIII. A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. Elected to Congress for " a Short Term " His Opinion of the Chaplaincy Land Reform The Famous Congressional Mileage Expose Ani mated Debates Tilt with "Long John" Wentworth on the Tariff CONTENTS. Question A Lively Debate on Congressional Books Speech on Re cruiting in the Army Speeches on the California and New Mexico Bills The Last Night of the Session "War Between the North and South Begun" Some of His Distinguished Fellow-Members: Messrs. Winthrop; Lincoln; Collamer; Giddings; Schenck; Horace Mann; Andrew Johnson; Ashmun; Wentworth; Cobb; R. W. Thompson; Jacob Thompson ; George W. Jones, of Tennessee ; Stephens ; Toombs ; Botts; John S. Pendleton; and others Address To his Constituents Congress Then and Now 205 CHAPTEK XIV. VISITS EUROPE. Crossing the Atlantic The Great Exhibition at London A Juror Sight-seeing Mr. Greeley s Opinion of London His Opinion of tha English and American Press Visits Paris Views of Parisian Morals and Social Life Predicts the Stability of the Republic Journey to Lyons Palaces and Potatoes Proceeds to Italy Sardinia Rome St. Peter s and the Coliseum The People Journey to Venice Switzerland Germany Belgium Paris Again Returns to London Glances at Scotland and Ireland Opinion of the English People -Home 231 CHAPTER XV. ON THE PLATFORM REVISITS EUROPE. Mr. Greeley On the Platform His First Lecture : "Human Life" His Style of Public Speaking Publishes a Volume of Lectures and Es says, Entitled "Hints Towards Reforms" Declines to Address a Literary Society Characteristic Letter A Letter Misinterpreted Does Not " Fail to Connect " Agricultural Addresses The Indiana Agricultural Fair of 1853 Mr. Greeley s Address The Night Ride on a Hand-car Revisits Europe Several "Weeks of Leisure Two Days in a French Prison His Amusing Account of His Incarceration Switzerland and the Glaciers A Presentiment Return to America. 260 CHAPTEK XVI. CAMPAIGN OF 1852 THE WHIG PARTY EXIT. The Dawn of a New Political Era The Political Canvass of 1852 The Nominations Mr. Greeley Mildly Supports General Scott, and "Spits Upon the Platform" His Individual Platform A Lively Campaign Terminating in Utter Rout 285 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE XVII. MR. GREELEY AND THE NEW POLITICAL ERA. Review of Mr. Greeley s PasfrPolitical Life Of the Parties of the Times The Day of Small Things The Compromise Measures of 1850 Mr. Greeley s Opinion of Them Renewed Agitation of the Slavery Question The Political Influence of Mrs. Stowe s Novel, "Uncle Tom s Cabin " Of the Public Press Mr. Greeley Departs on the New Departure 290 CHAPTEE XVIII. 1854 TO 1860. Mr. Greeley in the Political Contests of the Time The Renewal of Slavery Agitation The Kansas-Nebraska Struggle Messrs. Sumner, Chase, Wade, Seward, Fessenden The Know-Nothing Party Mr. Greeley opposes it "The Banks Congress" Mr. Greeley Assaulted General Banks Organization of the Republican Party The Fre mont-Buchanan Campaign Defeat of the Republicans The Kansas War "Lecompton" Senator Douglas Defends Popular Sovereignty Senator David C. Broderick, of California Edward D. Baker The Lincoln-Douglas Debates The Tribune on the Side of Douglas Mr. Greeley Travels Overland to California Extracts from His Letters Buffaloes, Prairie-Dogs, and Indians Life at Denver in 1859 Brig- ham Young and Mormonism Honours in California Receptions and Addresses The Yosemite The Pacific Railroad Return John Brown 396 CHAPTEE XIX. THE QUADRILATERAL CAMPAIGN OF 1860. The Division of Parties in 1860 Rupture of the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina The Chicago Convention Popular Enthusiasm Mr. Greeley a Delegate from Oregon Sup ports Edward Bates for President He Defeats Mr. Seward s Nomina tion "Greeley at the Tremont,-Weed at the Richmond House" Mr. Weed s Chagrin Eminent Men of the Convention: Thomas Corwin; David Wilmot; William M. Evarts; Joshua R. Gicldings; Carl Schurz; John A. Andrew; Cassius M. Clay; and others The Imbroglio Among New-York Politicians Mr. Raymond, from Auburn, Assails Mr. Greeley The Famous Letter Dissolving the Firm of "Seward, Weed and Greeley" Mr. Weed s Wisdom Two Democratic Tickets Nom inatedThe "Bell-Everett" Ticket The Candidates The Cam paign Success 387 CONTENTS. CHAPTEK XX. HOME LIFE. Horace Greeley at Home An Unpretending Household Margaret Ful ler s Description of Mr. Greeley s Home His Personal Habits Toilet Food His Hospitality Tenderness for His Children The Death of "Pickie" His Taste as to Home Adornments Buys a Farm. 357 CHAPTER XXI. HORACE GREELEY, THE FARMER. His Love of Rural Life But Not of Ox-Life His Wife s Judgment Principally Consulted as to The Farm Site Chappaqua A Descrip tion of the Place The First Forest Home There Mr. Greeley s Mode of Improving the Place His Practical Farming The Later Home General Facts as to his Farmer-Life His Work Entitled "What I Know of Farming" The Subject of Innumerable Jests Their Effect Upon Him 372 CHAPTER XXII. THE WAR OF THE REBELLION BEGUN. The Election of Abraham Lincoln Made a Pretext for War Mr. Greeley s Opinion upon the Right of Secession He Demands a Vote of the South eru People, Expressing a Willingness to Abide by the Result A Reply to Mr. Thurlow Weed s Assertion that Mr. Greeley was a Secessionist A Candidate for United State Senator The Tribune During the Early Part of the War "On To Richmond!" Mr. Fitz Henry Warren s Washington Letters The Washington Extemporaneous Club of Critics The Defeat of Bull Run Its Cause Mr. Greeley "Stampeded" Messrs. Dana and Warren Retire from The Tribune Secretary Stanton His Letter to Mr. Greeley Organizes Victory for the Union Arms The Policy of The Tribune 387 CHAPTER XXIII. THE WAR OF THE REBELLION CONTINUES. Correspondence with President Lincoln The Mob of 1863 Mr. Lincoln Re-elected President General McClellan the Opposing Candidate General Fremont and Montgomery Blair Withdraw Mr. Greeley s Peace Negotiations The Rebel Negotiations The Military Cam paigns of 1864--65 under Grant and Sherman Victory The Death of President Lincoln Hoiace Gieeley s Opinion of Him as aWar Presi- CONTENTS. dent President Andrew Johnson Mr. Greeley Undertakes to Bring About a Reconciliation Between the President and Congress The President Impeached Failure 404 CHAPTEE XXIY. HORACE GREELEY AND JEFFERSON DAVIS. Jefferson Davis, Escaping from Richmond, Is Captured Confined at Fortress Monroe Impracticability of Trial Horace Greeley s Inter- view with Senator Wade, of Ohio, on the Subject of Bailing Mr. Davis Mr. Greeley is Dissuaded from the Project But at Length Finally Resolves to Go Upon the Bond Visits Richmond for that Purpose The Scene in the Court Room Mr. Greeley s Richmond Speech Effect of this Act of Magnanimity Upon the Public 427 CHAPTER XXV. MORE HISTORY OF THE TRIBUNE. More of The Tribune s "Isms " Proudhon Endorses the Principle of the "Woman s Rights" Reform Advocates Labour Reform Asso ciation Adopted in The Tribune Office An Era of Energetic Idium A Description of The Tribune Establishment How the Paper is Edited Mention of Tribune Writers The Composition Room Press Room Counting Room The "Weekly" Day Resume/of Tribune History from Its Beginning 439 CHAPTER XXVI. THE AUTHOR OF BOOKS. Mr. Greeley in Permanent Literature His Labours on Political Manuals Edits a Life of Henry Clay " Hints Towards Reforms " " Glances at Europe " " Overland Journey to California " " What I Know of Farming" "The American Conflict" A Work Upon Polit ical Economy "Recollections of a Busy Life" Estimate of Mr. Greeley as an Author 487 CHAPTER XXVII. 1868 TO 1872. The Presidential Campaign of 1868 Nomination of General Grant by the Republicans and of Horatio Seymour by the Democrats Mr. Greeley Supports General Grant The Canvass Success of the Republicans President Grant s First Cabinet He Secures the Wrath of Professional Politicians Mr. Greeley at First Sustains the Admin- CONTENTS. istration A Candidate for Congress Against S. S. Cox The " Revenue Reform " Movement The Formation of a New Party Undertaken The Ideas of Its Representative Men Mr. Greeley Not at First in the Movement - 507 CHAPTEK XXVIII. A TOUR OF THE SOUTH. Mr. Greeley Visits Texas An Account of this Southern Tour He Emphatically Assails " the Carpet-Baggers " as a Class The Effect of the Tour Upon His Political Opinions 519 CHAPTEE XXIX. A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Organization of the Liberal Republican Party Preliminary Tactics Debates in the Senate Eminent Republicans Join in the Movement The Cincinnati Convention Candidates for Nomination Mr. Gree ley Successful The National Democratic Convention at Baltimore Notices of Some of its Eminent Men The Cincinnati Ticket Endorsed Mr. Greeley s Letters of Acceptance His Reception at Chappaqua of the Democratic Committee Notifying him of Nomina tion The Canvass His Tour of New England and of the West Death of Mrs. Greeley Defeat At Work Again on The Tribune. 530 CHAPTER XXX. LAST ILLNESS, DEATH, AND FUNERAL. Mr. Greeley Suddenly Prostrated by Alarming Illness The Public Interest in the State of His Ailment His Death from Disease of the Brain Circumstances Attending His Last Hours The Causes of His Death Manifold Work, the Criterion of Age His Funeral Attended by the President and Members of the Cabinet, the Vice- President and Many Eminent Men Funeral Sermons by Mr. Chapin and Henry Ward Beecher The Procession to the Grave A City in Mourning Requiescat 574 CHAPTER XXXI. TO SUM THE WHOLE THE CLOSE OF ALL. Review of the Private Life and Public Services of Mr. Greeley Estimate of His Genius His Character The Services He Rendered His Country and Mankind A Friend of the Labouring Man, One of the People, a Great, a Good, and an Honest Man, though Not a Perfect Character.. ..597 CONTENTS. APPENDIX. I. A. Mr. Greeley in Congress 617 1. Remarks on the Recruiting Service. 2. Speech on the Bill for the Admission of California. 3. The Battle of the Books. II. B. Mr. Greeley on the Platform 626 1. Humanity. 2. The Union of Workers. 3. Tobacco. 4. Temperate Drinking. 5. Universal Education. 6. Horace Greeley s Socialism. 7. Mr. Greeley s " Fourierism." III. C. Reconstruction 637 Mr. Greeley s Richmond Speech. IV. D. Mr. Greeley s Presidential Canvass 645 1. The Tour in New England Speeches. 2. The Tour in the West Speeches. V. E In Memoriam 665 Numerous Expressions of the Public Press in regard to Mr. Greeley s Life, Genius, and Character. INDEX.. ..678 ILLUSTRATIONS. Steel Engraving of Horace Greeley Frontispiece. Birthplace 23 First School House 25 Riding Horse to Plough 27 Young Greeley s Arrival in New- York 55 First Meeting of Mr. Greeley and Thurlow Weed 89 Portrait of William H. Seward 93 Thurlow Weed 93 Grand Political Barbecue in 1840 .101 Portrait of William Cullen Bryant .109 James Gordon Bennett, Sen 109 Henry J. Raymond 125 Manton Marble 125 Charles A. Dana 131 James Gordon Bennett, Jr ..131 Margaret Fuller 181 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe 181 The Clump of Evergreens .376 The First Forest Home of Mr. Greeley ..378 Mr. Greeley Working in his Orchard 384 The Late Home at Chappaqua. 386 Portrait of Horace White .389 Dr. Charles H. Ray 389 Abraham Lincoln _401 Edwin M. Stanton ..401 Tribune Building Franklin Statue Printing House Square 449 Mr. Greeley s Editorial Room ..453 Portrait of John W. Forney 465 John Russell Young ..465 Samuel Bowles 515 Murat Halstead. 515 General Edward D. Baker 533 A. G. Thurman 533 Theodore Tilton ...537 Whitelaw Reid 537 Fac-Simile of Mr. Greeley s Hand Writing ..551 The Body of Horace Greeley Lying in State in the City Hall 577 The Funeral Procession Passing Madison Square 587 Dust to Dust.. ..589 THE LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. CHAPTEE I. HORACE GREELEY S BIRTH ANCESTRY BOYHOOD. Birth of Horace Greeley Ancestry; Father, Grandfather, Great-grand father His Mother, Mary Woodburn Her Energy, Stories, Good Nature The Woodburn Family Of the Scotch -Irish Race Th Puritans Fond of Fun Birth-place Learns to Read Books Upside Down First School Days A Prodigy at Spelling Hard Work on the Farm Old Fashioned New Hampshire Hospitality The Greeley Family sold out of House and Home. HORACE GREELEY, who became the founder of the New- York Tribune, the most eminent journalist of his times, and one of the most useful aud distinguished of men, was born February 3d, 1811, in the town (called township in many parts of the United States) of Amherst, Hillsborough county. New Hamp shire. He was the third of seven children, of whom the two elder died before his birth. The father of Horace was Zaccheus Greeley, the mother Mary "Woodburn, and they had been married about four years when the little stranger who was destined to become so cele brated first opened his eyes to the light of day. Holy Writ informs us, in a text that has perplexed many minds, that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him ; which is but a forcible way of saying to a nation of rude men, more 2 18 LIFK OK HORACE GKEELET. easily persuaded through fear than otherwise, that like pro duces like. It is, after all, but the enunciation of a law of nature believed to be universal. Notwithstanding certain modem hypotheses stated with wonderful ingenuity and subtle ty, there has yet been no demonstration, or approach to it, that corn ever produced anything but corn, fruits anything but fruits, apes anything but apes, man anything but man. The good and ill qualities of races, families, individuals, descend from father to son no less certainly, though not always so pal pably, as wheat springs from wheat. Horace Greeley had the advantage of an ancestry of industrious, frugal, honest, respect able, Christian families, both on the side of his father and mother for several generations. Three brothers named Gree ley (spelled nearly as many different ways as the name of Shakespeare) migrated to America from Nottingham, England, twenty years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. One of them settled in Maine, where there are many descendants; another in Rhode Island; the third, in Massa chusetts, near the southern line of New Hampshire, into which State his descendants soon migrated. " The Greeleys of our clan," says Mr. Greeley, " while mainly farmers, are in part blacksmiths. Some of them have in this century engaged in trade, and are presumed to have acquired considerable property; but these are not of the tribe of Zaccheus." 1 " My grandfather Greeley," he continues, " was a most ex cellent, though never a thrifty, citizen. Kind, mild, easy-going, honest, and unambitious, he married young, and reared a family of thirteen, of whom he who died youngest was thirty years old; while a majority lived to be seventy, and three are yet living (18C8), at least two of them having seen more than eighty summers. * * A devoted, consistent, life-long Chris- 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 34. Mr. Parton, in his Life of Horace Greeley, speaks of " Old Captain Ezekial " Greeley in anything but com plimentary terms, and makes him out as having been the great journalist s great-grandfather. Mr. Greeley himself expressly says, a few lines above the words just quoted from him, that his father, grandfather, and great grandfather each bore the name of Zaccheus. lie doubtless knew who his great-grandfather was as well as any one else. HIS MOTHER. 19 tian, originally of the Baptist, hut ultimately of the Meth odist persuasion, exemplary in deportment and blameless in life, I do not believe that my grandfather Greeley ever made an enemy; and, while he never held an office, and his property was probably at no time worth $2,000, and generally ranged from $1,000 to zero, I think few men were ever more sincerely and orenerallv esteemed than he bv those who knew him." */ This excellent and amiable man died in his fulness of days, aged ninety-four. We shall presently see that his son Zaccheus the father of Horace inherited the amiable qualities of his immediate ancestor as well as the faculty of reaching the zero point in the acquisition of property; the occasion which demonstrated the latter quality being certainly one of the sad dest in the young days of Horace Greeley s life. The father died in December, 1S67, aged eighty-six, of which long life forty-two years had been spent in or on the verge of New Eng land, and the remainder in his long retained home in Western Pennsylvania, whereof he had been one of the great band of hardy, industrious pioneers who cut down our American forests, let iu the sun, and open the way for the triumphs of civilization and progress. Horace Greeley s mother was a woman of remarkable nature. She had great strength of body as well as of mind. Though lacking in education, she had a natural refinement and delicacy of sentiment whose beauty and loveliness could not be con cealed by her toilet of home-spun, nor lost in the drudgery of a hard-working destiny. "My mother," says Mr. Greeley himself, in that admirable series of Recollections which he contributed to the New- York Ledger in 1868, " having lost her mother when but five years old, was, for the next few years, the especial proteg6e and favourite of her aged grandmother, who had migrated from Ireland when but fourteen years old, and whose store of Scottish and Scotch-Irish traditions, songs, anecdotes, shreds of history, etc., can have rarely been equalled. These she imparted freely to her eager, receptive granddaugh ter, who was a glad, easy learner, whose schooling was better than that of most farmers daughters in her day, and who naturally became a most omnivorous and retentive reader. 20 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. There were many, doubtless, whose literary acquisitions were more accurate and more profound than hers; but few can have been better qualified to interest or to stimulate the unfolding mind in its earliest stages of development." She is described as tall, muscular, well-formed, with the strength of a man without his coarseness, active in her habits, deli<rhtin<r in hard O O work, with a perpetual flow of animal spirits, and the heartiest good will toward all living things. "She worked," writes an informant of Mr. Parton, " indoors and out of doors. She hoed in the garden ; she laboured in the field ; and while doing more than the work of an ordinary man and an ordinary woman combined, would laugh and sing all day long, and tell stories all the evening." In describing a visit to the father s Pennsylvania homestead in 1830, Mr. Greeley says: "The cabin which my father had bought with his land was nothing to brag of. My mother born half a century after the log-cabin stage of London derry could never be reconciled to this, nor to either of the two rather better ones that the family tenanted before it emerged into a poor sort of framed house. In fact, she had plunged into the primitive forest too late in life, and never became reconciled to the pioneer s inevitable discomforts. The chimney of the best log-house, she insisted, would smoke; and its roof, in a driving, drenching rain, would leak, do what you might. I think the shadow of the great woods oppressed her from the, hour she first entered them; and, though removed but two generations from pioneer ancestors, she was never reconciled to what the less roughly bred must always deem privations and hardships. I never caught the old smile on her face, the familiar gladness in her mood, the hearty joyful- ness in her manner, from the day she entered those woods until that of her death, nearly thirty years later, in August, 1855. Though not yet sixty-eight she had for years been worn out by hard work, and broken down in mind and body. Those who knew her only in her later years, when toil and trouble had gained the victory over her, never truly knew her at all." Such were the father and mother of Horace Greeley. His great-grandfather on the mother s side was John "Woodburu, TITE rURTTAKS. 21 one of the original Scotch-Irish settlers of Londonderry, New Hampshire. He had allotted to him a tract of 120 acres of land in 1721. and upon this farm Horace Greeley s mother was born, and there she was married to Horace Greeley s father. The farm is still in possession of the "Woodburn family, though no price was ever paid for it, nor has a deed of it ever been given, or at any rate had not at the time Mr. Greeley prepared his " Recollections of a Busy Life." The earliest settlers of this portion of New Hampshire were from Londonderry, Ireland, and are generally described as Scotch- Irish a race of fervid religious feelings, hard work, and notable pugnacity. Some of the original colonists had actually participated in the famous siege of Derry, and others, too young to fight, had been eye-witnesses of that remarkable exhibition of undaunted courage and sublime fortitude courage and fortitude which, perhaps, secured success to the English revolution and gave the final victory to the Protestant cause. Others still of the colonists and their families had heard the story of the siege many times told by actual par ticipants. Hence we may infer that the martial spirit was strong among Horace Greeley s ancestors; exhibited in him, in the pluck and vigour with which he overcame difficulties and oombatted opponents. These Scotch-Irish colonists and their descendants were no less noted for patriotism than for reli gious principle. Many of them were distinguished in the old French war 1756-1763 and the subject of this sketch records with evident pride that, " from first to last, London derry furnished 347 soldiers to the Revolutionary armies, while her whole number of adult males cannot have much exceeded 500." Not only were these people, among whom were Horace Greeley s ancestors, good fighters in their country s cause, devotedly religious, industrious, and frugal, but they were not the gloomy, world-despising race which they have been too often represented to be. Upon this point we have the full and express testimony of Mr. Greeley himself. He says: The current notion that the Puritans were a sour, morose, ascetic people objecting, as Macaulay says, to bear-baiting, not that it gave 22 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. pain to the bear, but that it gave pleasure to the spectator is not justified by my recollections, nor by the traditions handed down through my mother. The pioneers of Londonderry were so thoroughly Puritan that, while their original framed and well-built ineetiug-house was finished and occupied in the third year of the settlement, when there were none other but log huts in the township, nearly a century elapsed before any other than a Presbyterian or Orthodox Congregational sermon was preached therein, and nobody that was anybody adhered to any rival church, down to a period within the memory of persons still living. "The Westminster Sliorter Catechism " a rather tough digest of Calvinistic theology, which aroused my infantile wonder as to what a dreadful bore its longer counter part must be was, within my experience, regular!} administered to us youngsters once a week, as a portion of our common-school regimen; and we were required to affirm that "God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life," &c., &c., as though it were next of kin to the proposition that two and two made four. If there was anywhere a community strictly, thoroughly Puritan, such was Londonderry down to at least 1800, as she mainly is to-day. And yet there was more humour, more play, more fun, more merriment, in that Puritan community, than can be found anywhere in this anxious, plodding age. All were measurably poor, yet seldom were any hungry; all wore coarse clothes, made in utter contempt of the fashions which, in the course of three or four years, had made their way from Paris to Boston ; yet lads and lasses were as comely in each other s eyes, though clad in coarse homespun, as if they had been arrayed in purple and fine linen, and redolent of lavender and patchouli; and they danced with each other through long winter nights with a vigour and zest rarely evinced at Almack s or in Fifth Avenue mansions. Their weddings were far more numerously attended and more expensive than are the average in our day; for not to be invited was an affront, as it implied discredit or insignificance ; and all who were invited expected to eat and drink bounti fully of the best that could be had. A general discharge of musketry throughout the neighborhood ushered in a wedding-day; and the bride groom s party, starting from his house, was met by the bride s at a point half-way to hers, when one of each party was chosen to "run for the bottle " to the bride s house ; and whichever won the race returned with the prize to the wedding assembly; which, having drunk all around, proceeded, under a dropping -fire of musketry, to their destination; where the ceremony having been duly performed drinking was resumed, and continued, with alternate feasting and dancing, often till broad daylight. If the just renown which. Horace Greeley achieved by his intellectual triumphs and his beneficent labours in behalf of the cause of man s moral, political, and social advancement has given new lustre to the name of the people among whom LEARNING TO READ. 23 lie was born and reared, it should be remembered that thence he received and acquired the qualities which did very much to enable him to win the first position in the most influential calling, and to earn even in his lifetime the candid respect of all men whose respect is worth having. Horace Greeley was born in humble circumstances. His father, sometime after his marriage, had bought a farm of forty acres (afterwards increased to fifty), most of which was situated in the town of Amherst, but some of it in the adjoin ing town of Bedford. It was on the old road from Amoskeag Falls (now the thriving city of Manchester) to the village of Amherst, and about five miles from the latter. To this farm the family had removed about three years before the birth of Horace. The house in which he was born was a modest, framed, unpainted structure of one story, and at the time quite new. "It was only modified in our time," he long afterwards says, " by filling up and making narrower the old- fashioned kitchen fireplace, which, having already devoured all the wood on the farm, yawned ravenously for more." The dwelling, which still remains, faces the road from the north on a narrow plateau, about two-thirds down a hill, which was mostly covered by an orchard of natural fruit. In front was a patch of garden and a small frog-pond. Mr. Greeley always thought that sweeter and more spicy apples grew in the neglected orchard of his birthplace than can be bought in market; and insisted that it was not a mere notion that most fruits attain their highest and best flavour at or near the cold est latitude in which they can be grown at all. Horace was for some years a feeble, sickly child, even unable to watch through a closed window the falling of rain without incurring instant and violent illness. He became the companion and confident of lus mother about as soon as he could talk, and the willing, interested listener to her store of ballad, story, anecdote, and tradition. He says: "I learned to read at her knee, of course longer ago than I can remem ber; but I can faintly recollect her sitting spinning at her little wheel, with the book in her lap, whence I was talcing my daily lesson; and thus I soon acquired the facility of 24 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. reading from a book sidewise or upside down as readily as in the usual fashion, a knack which I did not at first suppose peculiar; but which, being at length observed, became a sub ject of neighbourhood wonder and fabulous exaggeration." Having so early learned to read in so singular a manner, Horace was sent to public school two months before he was three years of age. In order that so little a boy might attend school, he made his home for stated times with his grandfather Woodburn, the school-house of his district being but fifty rods from his house. Hence the precocious boy lived at his grandfather s, and went thence to school, most of each winter and some months in summer from the time he was three till he was six years of age. His first schoolmaster was David Woodburn Dickey, dis tantly related to himself : a classical scholar, and an able, worthy man, but a severe governor of youth, and having prac tical faith in the efficacy of birch and ferule. It appears clear that thus early in his life Horace Greeley manifested a strong antipathy to harsh punishments. His next teacher was Cyrus Winn, who rarely or never struck a blow, but governed by moral force and by appeals to the nobler impulses of his pupils. He was highly successful, and left at the close of his second term to the great regret of pupils and parents. His departure caused the first keen sorrow of Horace Greeley s life. He never saw his beloved teacher again, who \vas drowned during the following winter. The admirable start given Horace by his mother enabled him to make rapid progress in school. He was diligent, and quick to learn. He was especially clever in spelling, and very soon rose to the head of the first class, and retained that posi tion almost constantly during the whole of his school-days. " It was a custom of the school," says Mr. Greeley, " to choose sides for a spelling-match one afternoon of each week, the head of the first class in spelling and the pupil standing next being the choosers. In my case, however, it was found neces sary to change the rule, and confide the choice to those who stood second and third respectively; as I a mere infant of four years could spell, but not choose, often preferring my 1JI& FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE. 25 playmates who could not spell at all. These spelling-matches usually took place in the evening, when I could not keep my eyes open and should have been in bed. It was often neces sary to rap me sharply when the word came around to me; but I never failed to respond; and it came to be said that I spelled as well asleep as awake. I apprehend that this was more likely to be true of some others of the class, who, if ever so sound asleep, could scarcely have spelled worse than they did." 2 The present generation of school-boys, especially in our cities and towns, have little idea of school-day hardships fifty years ago. In nearly every Northern State, and now in many of the Southern States, one may find in every considerable town and city a public schoolhouse, often many, little less than palatial in size, built oftentimes at great expense, and with every consideration for the health and comfort of the pupils, and with all the " modern improvements " as to ventillation, water, heating apparatus, etc., which are found in the most celebrated hotels, with the exception, perhaps, of elevators. Upon these vast structures many millions of money have been expended, very much of which, undoubtedly, might have been more wisely laid out in more modest buildings of greater number and more attractive architecture. Horace Greeley was often carried through the snow to school by an affectionate aunt or the larger boys. When reached, the building was small, square, cheerless in situation, and comfortless within. The seats were rude benches, without backs, with the rudest possible apologies for desks along the sides of the room for those who might be engaged in writing or " cyphering." Such *I think there must be those who have a genius for spelling, just as there are those who have a genius for poetry, eloquence, mechanics, etc. I knew a lad at school about as little and as young as Horace Greeley when he was the champion of the spelling-matches who, though he could not at first spell at all, and used to weep most mournfully over always being at the foot of the class suddenly went to the head, one day, and never afterwards missed a word. He " put down " the whole town at spelling-matches before he was five years old. He voted for Mr. Greeley for President, in 1872, and has been heard to say that he would not exchange that fact for all the offices in the United States. 26 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. was the building in which he first attended school, and he never went to any which was much better. But he progressed rapidly in his studies, and soon became proficient in reading, arithmetic, and grammar, in addition to his unequalled proficiency as a speller. lie always wanted to be at the head of his class, and if by some mishap he was " turned down," he would weep bitterly over his mistake. He acquired a knowledge of geography at an unusually early age, and had read the Bible through with his mother before he was five years old. He was a shy boy, caring little for boyish sports, and not often participating therein, spending his time in reading instead; but he was a universal favourite with his school-fellows, and generally regarded in the community as a prodigy. He was an omniverous reader, and while the other boys were engaged during the recesses at play, he would be seen lying prone on the grass, weather permitting, devouring some book that he had borrowed. lie was observed to be occupied several times during the noon recess, utterly oblivious of dinner, and to return to school, when the teacher rapped with his ferule upon the window, perfectly unconscious that he had done nothing to satisfy his appetite. He was a boy Dominie Sampson harmless, studious, not fond of amuse ments, brave, and absolutely wanting in the feeling of cruelty. It has been said of him that he would quietly receive the blow of a schoolmate, but would appear, as a declaimer, even when a small boy, before the whole school without embarrassment; but I doubt whether the New England boy lived who would have given a blow in anger to one so innocent as " Hod " Greeley, as he was commonly called, was universally known to be. When the precocious boy got 7)1 d enough to work, there was much work to do. Farming in New England has never been sport. The year during which Horace Greeley first worked on the farm was the "cold summer" of 1816, when there was an inch of snow in June, no single month without a frost, the corn not filling till October. The first task of the boy of five years was to precede his father in the hoeing of corn, dig open the hills, and kill the wire-worms and grubs that were infesting RIDING HORSE TO PLOUGH. 27 the crop. He then began to * ride horse to plough," the horse preceding and guiding the oxen. " Occasionally," he says, " the plough would strike a fast stone, and bring up the team all standing, pitching me over the horse s head, and landing me three to five feet in front. En the frosty autumn mornings, the working teams had to be baited on the rowen or after math of thick, sweet grass beside the luxuriant corn; and I was called out at sunrise to watch and keep them out of the corn while the men ate their breakfast before yoking up and going afield. My bare feet imbibed a prejudice against that line of duty; but such premature rising induced sleepiness; so, if my feet had not ached, the oxen would have had a better chance for corn." 3 He also did much in these early days in the work of burning charcoal- a labour requiring great watch fulness and frequent exposure. He says that after a week of coal-burning, one finds it hard to return to regular sleep, but will hastily wake every hour or so, and instinctively jump up " to see how the pit is going on." The lad did a great deal of disagreeable labour in removing stones from the fields of his father s rocky farm. %; Pick as closely as you may," he says, " the next ploughing turns up a fresh eruption of boulders and pebbles, from the size of a hickory-nut to that of a tea-kettle; and as the work is mainly to be done in March or April, when the earth is saturated wdth ice-cold water, if not also whitened with falling snow, youngsters soon learn to regard it with detestation. I filially love the Granite State, but could well excuse the absence of sundry subdivisions of her granite." Fifty years after his hard work, as a mere boy, in the cornfields, burning charcoal, and picking stones, Mr. Greeley recurs to the season of " hop-picking" as the rural carnival, the festive harvest-home of those old times; answering to the vintage of southern France or Italy. During the fifth and sixth summers of Horace Greeley s life, he attended school irregularly, having to go about a mile from home. Often called out of bed at dawn to " ride horse to plough," he would be thus engaged until nine or ten o clock Recollections, p. 38. 28 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. in the morning, when he would trudge off to school, some times arriving when the morning s session was half through. In the winter there was less work, but the snows were deep, the cold intense, the north wind piercing. Nevertheless, the white-headed urchin, though thinly clad, somehow found his way to school promptly nearly every day during the winter terms, and continued to progress in his studies no less rapidly than when he was the youngest and smallest of the pupils. During the years 1818, 1819, the family lived on what was called the u Beard Farm," in the town of Bedford, but returned to the old homestead in the spring of the following year, which was one of intensely hard and constant labour to father, wife, and children so that neither Horace nor his brother could go to school and sadly ended with the utter bankruptcy of Zaccheus Greeley. The year closed with the termination of his living in the old Granite State and the total wreck of his small fortune. The particulars of this sad mishap we shall relate in the following chapter. Here it will be in order to make a brief resume of Horace Greeley s life in his native State. We have seen that up to the time when he was about ten } T ears of age, the boy Horace Greeley had done his fair share of hard labour, and had studied more, and far more success fully, than is usual. When but five years old, he had read the Bible through in course, from Genesis to Revelations. At ten, he had mastered all the school books of the times. He had also read all the books he could borrow in the neighbourhood for miles around. The first book he ever owned was the " Columbian Orator," a volume consisting of selections of prose and poetry for recitation and declamation. Many school boys of the West whose school da} r s were years later than those of Horace Greeley, will well recollect the same book. It did not, in fact, pass out of use in some of the Western States until after Horace Greeley s name was well know r n throughout the country, and The New- York Tribune had become a power in the land. When he was seven or eight years old, he had committed to memory every selection in this book, but when A BORN DEMOCRAT. 29 he was less than three years old, and before he could speak plainly, he declaimed the verses beginning, " You d scarce expect one of my age To speak in public on the stage," so often that he became heartily sick of the lines, and never again became reconciled to them during his whole life. Very early in life he was also able to repeat from memory whole books of both the Old and the iSTew Testament. It is related of him that in order that he might pursue his studies by night, he would gather large numbers of pine-knots, by the light of which in the fire-place, as he lay prone on the floor, he would read for hours until actually driven to bed, in fact utterly oblivious of what might be going on about him. After going to bed he would keep his brother awake for a good long hour with accounts of all the matters and thing* he had been reading about. The only sport, perhaps, in which he took any real delight during these early years in Xew Hampshire, was fishing, and in this he was more expert than any of the boys of the neigh bourhood. And even fishing was rather work than sport to him. "When I go a-fishing," he used to say, "I go a-fishing, and not funning." He was almost always unusually success ful, catching more fishes than all his companions together. The years Horace Greeley lived in Tsew Hampshire were passed in a community of democrats. In Amherst, Bedford, and Londonderry there was no caste of any kind in those days. Perhaps the most notable illustration of the difference between plain and "company" days, was that, on great occasions, guests expected to be treated to wheaten bread, whereas the usual staff of life was bread made of cornmeal or rye flour. The absence of all social distinctions is shown by the fact. related by Mr. Greeley years afterwards, that when for a single year his New Hampshire home echoed to the steps of a female "help," she always ate with the family, even when they had the neighbours as "company;" and she had her party, and invited the girls of the neighbourhood to be her guests at tea, just as though she were a daughter of the house. The richest man 30 LIFE OF ITOKACE GEEELEY. in the whole neighbourhood was not worth more than $3,000. Hospitality had become less bounteous, Mr. Greeley asserts, and kinship less prized, than in the days of the Scotch-Irish pioneers; but there was still much visiting of relatives and social enjoyment, especially in winter, when hundreds returned to the old Londonderry hive from the younger swarms scat tered all over the East; not a few from as far away as Western New York. Zaccheus Greeley s latch-string was always out; "and a free liver," his distinguished son remarks with char acteristic drollery, "with twelve brothers and sisters, to say nothing of their partners by marriage and their children, is not apt to be persistently shunned. The father of Horace Greeley was as proud as he was poor, and as generous as he was proud. The social requirements of the times and neigh bourhood, perfectly unexclusive, democratic as they were, surpassed his means to afford. And now debts began to press upon him with greater and greater burden; until, in 1820, he reached the zero point of personal finances and credit, and was forced to witness the sad spectacle of his wife and little ones being sold out of house and home that his lawful obliga tions to pay might be satisfied, in the customary mode of sacrifice according to the forms of law. CHAPTER II. APPRENTICESHIP. Removal of the Ruined Family to Vermont Poverty of the Manly American Sort Vermont Schools Horace Keeps a Sort of Night School An Omnivcrous Reader "Clearing" Timber Lands Flea Knoll The Ague A Respected Poor Family Review of Farmer- Boy Life Horace chooses the Printer s Trade Apprenticeship at Poultney in the Northern Spectator Office Dramatic Account of the Contract Family Remove to Western Pennsylvania A Sad Part ing Horace as a Printer An Authority in Politics and General Knowledge Anecdotes An Excellent " Checker" Player His Uncouth Toilet Takes Down a "Swell" Sends His Earnings Home Journeys to Pennsylvania First Essays m Writing A Fugitive-Slave Chase Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence Learn ing a Trade Better than a College Education. TUE family catastrophe referred to at the close of the last chapter was the result of a variety of causes. Zaccheus Gree- ley s two years tenancy of the "Beard Farm" was disastrous in more ways than one. lie was not paid, as he expected to be, for the improvements he made on the farm. His health failed, and for nearly a year he was unable to work. His brother, who had taken his own farm, did not prosper. It was a period of "hard times," that is, a period when almost all persons in community belong to the debtor class. He had added to his own indebtedness by rash indorsements, so that he owed about $1,000, which all he had would not have paid at the prices then current. The sad story of the complete downfall of the humble household can never be better told than in the words of the Great Editor himself: We had finished our summer tillage and our haying, when a very- heavy rain set in, near the end of August. I think its second day was a Satur day; and still the rain poured till far into the night. Father was absent on business; but our mother gathered her little ones around her, and delighted us with stories and prospects of good things she purposed to do for us in the better days she hoped to see. Father did not return (31) 32 TJFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. till after we children were fast asleep ; and, when he did, it was with tidings that our ill fortune was about to culminate. I guess that he was scarcely surprised, though we young ones ruefully were, when, about sun rise on Monday morning, the sheriff and sundry other officials, with two or three of our principal creditors, appeared, and first formally demand ing payment of their claims proceeded to levy on farm, stock, imple ments, household stuff, and nearly all our worldly possessions but the clothes we stood in. There had been no writ issued till then, of course, no trial, no judgment, but it was a word and a blow in those days, and the blow first, in the matter of debt-collecting by legal process. Father left the premises directly, apprehending arrest and imprisonment, and was invisible all day ; the rest of us repaired to a friendly neighbour s, and the work of levying went on in our absence. It were needless to add that all we had was swallowed up, and our debts not much lessened. Our farm, which had cost us $1,350, and which had been considerably improved in our hands, was appraised and set off to creditors at $500, out of which the legal costs were first deducted. A barn-full of rye, grown by us on another s land, whereof we owned an undivided half, was attached by a doctor, threshed out fcy his poorer customers by days work on account, and sold ; the net result being an enlargement of our debt, the grain failing to meet all the cost. Thus, when night fell, we were as bankrupt a family as well could be. We returned to our devastated house ; and the rest of us stayed there while father took a journey on foot westward, in quest of a new home. He stopped in the township of Hampton, Washington County, X. Y., and, worked there two or three mouths with a Colonel Parker French, who tilled a noble farm, and kept tavern on the main road from Troy into western Vermont. He returned to us in due time, and, on the 1st of Jan uary, 1821, we all started in a hired two-horse sleigh, with the little worldly gear that was left us, for the township of Westhaven, Vermont, where father had hired, for $10 per annum, a small house, in which, after an intensely cold journey, we were installed three days later. 1 The family of Zaccliens Greeley had now made the acquain tance of genuine poverty, "not beggary, nor dependence, but the manly American sort." The value of their whole property, including even the-<:lothes they wore, did not exceed 200 ; and as that sum had afterwards to be paid on old New Hampshire debts, their material possessions when they reached their new home were correctly represented by 0, with a credit for their few worldly goods in possession. " Yet," says Mr. Greeley, in his Recollections of this period of his busy life, "we never needed nor ran into debt for anything; never were 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, 49-50. "THE RUDIMENTS OF LEARNING." 33 without meal, meat, and wood, and very rarely without money." The father went to chopping at fifty cents per day, and the children all attended school till spring, and this though there were no school-funds in those days. " and rate- bills for four children made quite a hole in a gross income of $3 per week." The schools are spoken of as at this time rather better than those of New Hampshire at least on account of the longer duration of the terms. On account of the nar row range of studies, however, young Greeley was unable to make that considerable advance in knowledge which a more liberal curriculum would have provided for. And here, it may be said in passing, is an argument in favour of a generous system of instruction in our public schools that they might well heed who insist that the state has done its whole duty in the premises when it has provided for all the means of acquiring " the rudiments of an English education," whatever they may be. Whilst many are acquiring those " rudiments," others and these the best and brightest of our youth are able to acquire the rudiments and much more besides. Why should these be kept hum-drumming the rudiments over and over again because of stupidity for which they are no wise responsible? Those who can only mark time have no right to keep in the ranks those who can march. It does not cost a penny more to the state to keep a boy at school during the school-going years who in that period can gain what is called a good English education" and also no little knowledge of practical sciences, history, literature, than it does to keep a boy at school for the same period who will emerge at the end of it utterly befogged in the mists of vulgar tractions, and unable to "move on." There is neither reason nor economy in manacling bright heads to blockheads. Horace Greeley lived in Vermont with his father from January, 1821, up to the latter part of April, 1826, that is, from the time he was about ten years old until he was some thing over fifteen. This is, perhaps, the period of life when one s mind, as well as body, grows the most rapidly. It surely may be said to be the beginning of the period in which mental development is, on the average, the greatest. But so far as 3 34 UFE OF HORACE GREELEY. the schools in this part of Vermont were concerned, there might about as well have been none for any substantial good they did Horace Greeley. Indeed, one of the teachers went to Zaccheus Greeley and frankly confessed Horace might well be his teacher, but he could not teach Horace anything. He had all the school books of the time by heart, being as familiar with every one as with the alphabet, Nevertheless, he con tinued to attend during the winter terms, but doubtless received far more benefit as a teacher than as a pupil. For the boys of neighbours would come to him of nights and get him to clear away the dark places of grammar for them, and show them how to " work out " sums in the arithmetic. He had a remark able faculty of clearly and forcibly illustrating the lessons in hand. He continued to be a great reader. When about eleven years of age, he read Shakespeare, and not long afterwards procured a volume of poems by Mrs. Hemans for whom he conceived the greatest admiration, which did not abate during his life. He had some time before read the Arabian Nights, and Robinson Crusoe. As in New Hampshire, so when living in Vermont, he scoured the neighbourhood for books; read a number of historical works, considerable English poetry, romances, and, in short, whatever in the shape of a book he could buy or borrow. Thus^ie educated himself; thus the process of becoming a self-made man went on rapidly and well, notwithstanding difficulties and trials before which an ordinary mind and a nature of less than sublime pluck, would have succumbed in utter despair. For these five years of farmer-boy life in Vermont were not only years of poverty of the manly American sort aforesaid but of hard labour. In New Hampshire, the Greeleys ranked as farmers ; in Vermont they were day- labourers. The cot rented by the father was on an extensive farm known as " the Minot Estate," and the first contract for work he made was one in which he engaged to " clear " fifty acres of white pine lands. The price agreed upon was seven dollars per acre, with the use of a team, and half of the fuel and timber suitable for use. The work w T as rugged and A FARMER-BOY. 35 grimy, but healthful. It required two years except the winters to finish the job, and, when done, part of the three hundred and fifty dollars the cash price of the labour of father and two sons for two years was lost, on account of the bankruptcy of the owner of the land. At the end of this work the family moved two miles westward, to a little farm known as Flea Knoll, where the father tended a saw mill, twelve hours on and twelve off, in w T hich he was assisted by a son younger than Horace, the latter appearing to have had a natural antipathy to log-rolling of any species. He cultivated Flea Knoll. But the first part of the season was wet, and the crops had to be planted in mortar. Then it became very hot and dry., so that the surface of the ground was baked into a tough crust, through which the plants could not penetrate without great assistance from the hoe. The results were very meagre. Next, the family took the fever and ague, and were glad to return at the end of a year to the Minot estate. Here they cultivated a small farm during the next two years, and also did some more work at " clearing." The crops of these two years were in the main a failure, the wheat being destroyed bv the midge. j O Tli us the Greeleys had again become farmers. The expe rience in New Hampshire had not been without its value upon the father. By hard work, the most careful economy, he had been able during these five years in Yermout to improve some what his circumstances, and to save a little money. It is not too much to say, perhaps, that no intelligent family in all the republic lived more humbly; not one with greater affection and happiness among its members. Their food was of the plainest, and served in almost primitive manner. Their clothing, in summer, was made of domestic "tow linen"; in winter, of home-spun, in which there was some admixture of wool. Horace Greeley s toilet during these toilsome years consisted of a pair of pantaloons, a shirt, and a hat, to which were added, for use in winter, a waistcoat, shoes and stockings. It was remarked that his pantaloons were always short in the legs, and inevitably shorter in one than the other. Going bare-footed all summer, from very early spring till very late 36 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. fall, in fact, it may well be concluded that he imbibed a hearty detestation of the Canada thistles which did greatly abound in the country. The statement should not be omitted, that notwithstanding Zaccheus Greeley s poverty and life of constant labour, there was no household more popular in the neighbourhood than his. He was himself generous, good- natured, not slow at story-telling. His wife was ever joyful, abounding in song and love of her kind. Horace was a young philosopher, awkward in manner, unique in apparel, but droll in conversation, and ever ready to assist his schoolmates in their studies. No poor family ever received more company, and few rich ones ever had more genuine friends. During his life in Westhaven, Horace Greeley learned to take part in two kinds of sport snow-balling and bee-hunt ing and became quite successful in either. It was observed, however, that the most of his share of the luscious contents of the bee-tree, was invariably carried to the store and sold lie also made some money for himself by grubbing up the roots of pitch-pine trees and selling them for kindlings. The funds thus procured he invested in books. He had now been a hard-working farmer-boy for ten years. Reviewing this portion of his life, he says: "During the whole period, though an eager and omnivorous reader, I never saw a book that treated of agriculture and the natural sciences auxiliary thereto. I think I never saw even one copy of a periodical devoted mainly to fanning; and I doubt that we ever harvested one bounteous crop. A good field of rye, or corn, or grass, or potatoes, we sometimes had; but we had more half crops than whole ones; and a good yield of any one product was generally balanced by two or three poor ones. I know I had the stuff in me for an efficient and successful farmer; but such training as I received at home would never have brought it out. And the moral I would deduce from my experience is simply this: Our farmers sons escape from their fathers calling whenever they can, because it is made a* mindless, monotonous drudgery, instead of an . ennobling, liberalizing, intellectual pursuit. Could I have known in my youth what a business farming sometimes is, always may A FORROWFUL WALK. 37 be, and yet generally shall be, I never would have sought nor chosen any other. In the farmer s calling, as I saw it fol lowed, there was neither scope for expanding faculties, incite ment to constant growth in knowledge, nor a spur to generous ambition. To preserve existence was its ordinary impulse; to get rich, its exceptional and most exalted aim. So I turned from it in dissatisfaction, if not in disgust, and sought a different sphere and vocation." The vocation chosen was that of a printer, to which he had been inclined since early childhood. Visiting a blacksmith s shop once, when very young, he was asked if he would not like to be a blacksmith. " No," said he, " I m goin^ to be a * 7 O O printer." During the last summer that the family lived in New Hampshire, an offer was made by the leading men of the neighbourhood to send the boy to Phillips Academy at Exeter, and thence to college, the expense being so defrayed that no part of it should fall on his parents. They listened thoughtfully to the proposal, consulted the party chiefly con cerned, and then gratefully declined it; saying they would give their children the best education they could afford and there stop. The boy preferred to oe a printer, and to be indebted for his schooling to none but those of whom he had a right to ask and expect it. In the course of his "omnivor ous reading." even when a child, he found nothing that gave him more delight, or, perhaps, more instruction, than the Farmer s Cabinet, a weekly journal published at the village of Amherst, and to which his father was a regular subscriber. In Yermont, he read with equal zest the Northern Spectator, published at East Poultney. Only a year after the family moved to Vermont, and when he was but eleven years old, he went with his father to the newspaper office at Whitehall, where an apprentice was wanted, and applied for the place, but had his application rejected on account of his youth. So he went home downcast and sorrowful. No other opportunity came under his observation until the spring of 1826, when he read an advertisement in the North ern Spectator, mentioned above, stating that an apprentice was wanted in that office. So he walked to East Poultney, 38 liFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. twelve miles distant, to see if he could secure the situation. Mr. Parton, in his Life of Horace Greeley, 2 thus graphically describes the interviews leading to the contract of appren ticeship: It was u flue spring morning in the year 1826, about ten o clock, when Mr. Amos Bliss, the manager, and one of the proprietors, of the Northern Spectator, " might have been seen " in the garden behind his house plant ing potatoes. He heard the gate open behind him, and, without turning or looking round, became dimly conscious of the presence of a boy. But the boys of country villages go into whosesoever garden their wandering fancy impels them, and supposing this boy to be one of his own neighbours, Mr. Bliss continued his work and quickly forgot that he was not alone. In a few minutes, he heard a voice close behind him, a strange voice, high-pitched and whining. It said, "Are you the man that carries on the printing office V" Mr. Bliss then turned, and resting upon his hoe, surve3 r ed the person who had thus addressed him. He saw standing before him a boy apparently about fifteen years of age, of a light, tall, and slender form, dressed in the plain farmer s cloth of the time, his garments cut with an utter disregard of elegance and fit. His trowsers were exceedingly short and voluminous; he wore no stockings; his shoes were of the kind denominated "high-lows," and much worn down; his hat was of felt, " one of the old stamp, with s ? small a brim, that it looked more like a two- quart measure inverted than anything else ;" and it was worn far back on his head ; his hair was white, with a tinge of orange at its extremities, and it lay thinly upon a broad forehead and over a head " rocking on shoulders which seemed too slender to support the weight of a member so clispropor- tioned to the general outline." The general effect of the figure and its costume was so outrtf, they presented such a combination of the rustic and ludicrous, and the apparition had come upon him so suddenly, that the amiable gardener could scarcely keep from laughing. He restrained himself, however, and replied, " Yes, I m the man." Whereupon the stranger asked, " Don t you want a boy to learn the trade?" "Well," said Mr. Bliss, "we have been thinking of it. Do you want to learn to print?" " I ve had some notion of it," said the boy in true Yankee fashion, as though he had not been dreaming about it, and longing for it for years. Mr. Bliss was both astonished and puzzled astonished that such a fellow as the boy looked to be, should have ever thought of learning to print, and puzzled how to convey to him an idea of the absurdity of the notion. So, with an expression in his countenance, such as that of a tender-hearted dry-goods merchant might be supposed to assume if a hod- * Page 49, et seq., new edition. TALK WITH MR. AMOS BLISS. 39 carrier should apply for a place in the lace department, he said, " Well, my boy but, you know, it takes considerable learning to be a printer. Have you been to school much?" " No," said the boy, " I haven t had much chance at school. I ve read some." "What have you read?" asked Mr. Bliss. " Well, I ve read some history, and some travels, and a little of most everything." " Where do you live ?" " At Westhaven." " How did you come over ?" " I came on foot." " What s your name ?" " Horace Greeley." Now it happened that Mr. Amos Bliss had been for the last three years an Inspector of Common Schools, and in fulfilling the duties of his office examining and licensing teachers he had acquired an uncom mon facility in asking questions, and a fondness for that exercise which men generally entertain for any employment in which they suppose themselves to excel. The youth before him was in the language of medical students a "fresh subject," and the Inspector proceeded to try all his skill upon him, advancing from easy questions to hard ones, up to those knotty problems with which he had" been wont to " stump candidates for the office of teacher. The boy was a match for him. He answered every question promptly, clearly, and modestly. He could not be " stumped " in the ordinary school studies, and of the books he had road he could give a correct and complete analysis. In Mr. Bliss s own ;!Ccount of the interview, he says, "On entering into conversation, and a partial examination of the qualifications of my new applicant, it required hut little time to discover that he possessed a mind of no common order, and an acquired intelligence far beyond his years. He had had but little opportunity at the common school, but he said he had read some, and what he had read he well understood and remembered. In addition to the ripe intelligence manifested in one so young, and whose instruction had been so limited, there was a single-rnindedness, a truthfulness, and common sense in what he said, that at once commanded my regard." After half an hour s conversation with the boy, Mr. Bliss intimated that he thought he would do, and told him to go into the printing-office and talk to the foreman. Horace went to the printing-office, and there his appearance produced an effect on the tender minds of the three apprentices who were at work therein, which can be much better imagined than described, and which is most vividly remembered by the two who survive. To the foreman Horace addressed himself, regardless certainly, oblivious probably, of the stare and the remarks of the boys. The foreman, at first, was inclined to wonder that Mr. Bliss should, for one moment, think it possible that a boy got up in that style could perform the most ordinary duties of a printer s apprentice. Ten minutes talk with him, however, 40 LIFE OF HORACE GREEL1 effected a partial revolution in his mind in the boy s favour, and as he was greatly in want of another apprentice, he was not inclined to be over particular. He tore off a slip of proof-paper, wrote a few words upon it hastily with a pencil, and told the boy to take it to Mr. Bliss. That piece of paper was his fate. The words were: "Guess we d better try him." Away went Horace to the garden, and presented his paper. Mr. Bliss, whose curiosity had been excited to a high pitch by the extraordinary contrast between the appearance of the boy and his real quality, now entered into a long conversation with him, questioned him respecting his history, his past employment, his parents, their circumstances, his own intentions and wishes; and the longer he talked, the more his admiration grew. The result was, that he agreed to accept Horace as an apprentice, provided his father would agree to the usual terms; and then, with eager steps, and a light heart, the happy boy took the dusty road that led to his home in Westhaven. "You re not going to hire that tow-head, Mr. Bliss, are you?" asked one of the apprentices at the close of the day. "I am," \va+ the reply, "and if you boys are expecting to get any fun out of him, yo d better get it quick, or you ll be too late. There s something in thu tow-head, as you 11 find out before you re a week older." A day or two after, Horace packed up his wardrobe in a small cotton handkerchief. Small as it was, it would have held more ; for its proprietor never had more than two shirts, and one change of outer-clothing, at the same time, till he was of age. Father and son walked, side by side, to Poultney, the boy carrying his possessions upon a stick over his shoulder., At Poultney, an unexpected difficulty arose, which for a time made Horace tremble in his high-low shoes. The terms proposed" by Mr. Bliss were, that the boy should be bound for five years, and receive his board and twenty dollars a year. Now, Mr. Greeley had ideas of his own on the subject of apprenticeship, and he objected to this proposal, and to every particular of it. In the first place, he had determined that no child of his should ever be bound at all. In the second place, he thought five years an unreasonable time ; -thirdly, he considered that twenty dollars a year and board was a compensation ridiculously disproportionate to the services which Horace would be required to render ; and finally, on each and all of these points, he clung to his opinion with the tenacity of a Greeley. Mr. Bliss appealed to the established custom of the country ; five years was the usual period ; the compensation offered was the regular thing ; the binding was a point essential to the employer s interest. And at every pause in the conversation, the appealing voice of Horace was heard : " Father, I giiess you d better make a bargain with Mr. Bliss;" or, "Father, I guess it won t make much difference ;" or. " Don t you think you d better do it, father?" At one moment the boy was reduced to despair. Mr. Bliss had given it as his ultimatum that the proposed binding was absolutely indispen sable ; he " could do business in no other way." " Well, then, Horace," said the father, " let us go home." The father turned to go ; but Horace lingered ; he could not give it up; and so the father turned again; the negotiation FAREWELL TO FAMILY. 41 vros re-opened, and after a prolonged discussion, a compromise wag effected. And so the father went home, and the son went straight to the printing-office and took his first lesson in the art of setting type. The terms of the agreement, as stated by Mr. Greeley in his Recollections were: He was to remain in the office until he became twenty years of age, be allowed board only for the first six months, and thereafter, in addition, $40 per annum for his clothing. Such was the humble contract by means of which he who became the founder of The i^ew-York Tribune entered into the business of printing. Soon after he had entered upon his apprenticeship the others of the family removed to Erie county, Pennsylvania, whither the father had some time before journeyed, and where he had purchased a small quantity of land, mostly primeval forest, but including a " log-cabin " and four acres of clearing. Before their departure, Horace walked over to Westhaven to bid them good-bye, spending a Sunday at home. They tried hard to persuade him to go with them, and, on account of there being some things in the conduct of the office at Poult- ney not to his mind, the temptation to go was strong, but his ideas of good faith prevented him from yielding. The members of the family were devotedly attached to each other, and the parting was one of deepest sadness. Horace s return walk to Poultney, as he says himself, was one of the slowest and sad dest of his life. They proceeded on their long journey, and the place which had known them all so well knew them no more forever. When Mr. Parton visited the farm, more than a quarter of a century afterwards, he found the grass growing where the little home in Westhaven in which the family had longest lived, had stood, and the barn in which they had stored their hay and kept their cattle leaning forward, like a kneeling elephant, letting in the daylight through ten thou sand apertures. As a printer-pupil, Horace Greeley was exceedingly apt. He had long thought of the subject, and in the course of his miscellaneous reading, especially of newspapers, had doubtless met with occasional paragraphs giving him correct ideas of the practical art. And hence, when the foreman had once 42 LIFE OF HORACE QKEELEY. described " the case to him, he knew immediately where to find the types for every letter, punctuation point, spaces, etc. Furnished then with a "stick," "rule," and "copy" (re-print, of course) he went to work, not much unlike an old hand at the business. He worked steadily and quietly at the case all day, and when evening came on he could set type as rapidly and as well as most boys who have been weeks at the business. Even the knack of "emptying the stick" did not appear to give him much trouble, and he did not "pi " a line for weeks. 3 The sanctum, counting-room, composition-room, and press room of the Northern Spectator were all in the same apart ment; and, it may be added, the mailing-room also, which consisted of a table and a few pigeon-holes. The only printer entitled to be called a journeyman was the foreman, who set up job-work, read proofs, and attended to matters generally, giving some of the time of each day to setting up type. So that in reality, Horace Greeley was simply the junior appren tice in the office. In printer s technical phrase, he \vas " th^ devil;" and printers need not be told that from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, " the devil " is the butt of the whole office. But Greeley was so perfectly quiet, inoffensive, and industrious, that the boys hardly knew how to take him in. They threw broken types at him ; they pelted him with "wads;" but he kept on at his work, replying no more than if he were an automaton type-setter. On the third day of his apprenticeship, one of the boys took the ball which was then used, instead of the modern roller, to ink the types on the pi-ess, and gave Horace three or four very black impressions on his white head. He did not appear to mind it at all, but presently left the office. In an hour or so he returned, with every vestige of the ink removed, and quietly 3 The " stick " is the implement, held in the left hand, into which the types are placed, with the right hand. An ordinary composing stick holds something less than two inches of matter, measured down the column, to which, of course, it is adjusted. When this is filled, the types must be taken out and placed in a galley for proof taking. Thus to remove the types from the stick, without having them disarranged ("pied") is a knack not often easily acquired. Horace Greeley emptied his stick successfully the first day of his apprenticeship. OVERWORKED APPRENTICE. 43 proceeded with his work. And that was the last practical joke perpetrated upon Horace Greeley during his apprentice ship. Thenceforth, the boys were all his devoted friends, and though he was, perhaps, the most awkward of youths in general manners, he was so conscientious and diligent in labour and so well informed, it may be doubted whether any apprentice was ever more highly respected by his fellow- printers or by those of the general public who became acquainted with him. Nevertheless it is true that he was by no means wholly pleased with his situation. The organization and manage ment of the office were vicious, as he himself testifies. An apprentice should have but one master, whereas he had a series of them and often two or three at once. The concern changed owners several times, coming under control of those who were not practical printers. And so the office was ill and laxly governed. On one account this was well for Horace Greeley, for the apprentices were allowed to learn whatever they chose; and he chose to learu all branches of the art. On the other hand this caused him to work over-much; and he had not been in the office a year till he did all the press- work for the paper. Printers will know how T hard this work was, when told that the paper was printed on an old-fashioned double-pull Ramage (wooden) press. " I would not imply," says Mr. Greeley, speaking of the time he spent at East Poultney, "that I worked too hard; yet I think few appren tices work more steadily and faithfully than I did throughout the four years and over of my stay in Poultney. While I lived at home, I had always been allowed a day s fishing, at least once a month in spring and summer, and I once went hunting; but I never fished nor hunted, nor attended a dance, nor any sort of party or fandango, in Poultney. I doubt that I even played a game of ball." It thus happened, that when these four years and over of steady, faithful work was done, Horace Greeley was graduated to the degree of Journeyman with quite as much right to it, pro merito. as any one who ever received it from a country printing office, where, by the 44 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. way, very many of our most successful printers have learned the business. Mr. Bliss, Horace Greeley s first employer in the printing business, states, in a letter which has been largely published, that he " doubts if, in the whole term of his apprenticeship, he ever spent an hour in the common recreations of young men." This is probably true as to out-door recreations; but it may well be doubted whether there has ever yet been a printer who did not have some in-door recreations. Their labour is both bodily and mental, and, therefore, tiresome, exhaustive. It consumes the " phosphorous " of the human system aboiit as much as any other employment. Some kind of recreation is a necessity. As a matter of fact, printers are generally fond of in-door games and skilful therein. Horace Greeley, a printer s apprentice, played many a game of checkers, or drafts, with three-em and two-em u quods " for the men, and if he did not play " poker " with quods for " chips " his printer s experience may be accounted as absolutely unique. He was. in truth, an uncommonly skilful checker player, was good at chess, and better than usual at whist and other inno cent games of cards. But he never gambled for a penny in his life. He indulged in these games for recreation only, and never for this purpose on Sunday. 4 It were well if all printers, and all men for that matter, were, if not as skilful as guiltless of all harm in these games as was Horace Greeley. On many accounts Poultney was an excellent place in which to serve an apprenticeship. The community was essentially rural, the citizens intelligent and moral ; so that there were few temptations to dissipation and vice. There was a publie 4 There is a story that he originated the popular inquiry, " How is that for high?" It is said that, once playing a four-handed game of Old Sledge, or Seven Up, one of the players threw down the tray of trumps, asking " how is that for low?" "When it came his turn, he threw down the deuce, exclaiming, " How is that for High?" Though the deuce could not possibly be beaten for " low," the cream of the joke was that Mr. Greeley saved his " Jack " and caught a ten-spot on the very next trick. No " heathen Chinee " ever did better. This is said to be the origin of the comic song " How Is that for High," than which none has been more popular on the boards, especially when rendered by our Chicago Emerson. A YOUNG DEBATER. 45 library in the village, the n rst with which Horace Greeley became acquainted. " I have never since," he says, " found at once books and opportunity to enjoy them, so ample as while there; I do not think I ever before or since read to so much profit." In addition to the books, he also had the advantages of a Debating Society, or Lyceum, whose members consisted of many of the most intelligent men of the village, whose meetings were held once a week, when questions, proposed at previous meetings, were debated very much as questions are debated in the literary societies of our learned institutions. The exercises were public; the admission was free; and so popular did the meetings become that they were attended by the people of Poultney generally, babies inclusive, and by many from the surrounding country. Farmers from a distance of ten miles often attended. Horace Greeley joined this society, and, though a mere youth, at once took rank as a skilful and powerful debater. He did not then have, and never acquired, "the graces of oratory," so called, but he was then, as he ever was, an interesting, intelligent speaker, whose ideas were clear and clearly, forcibly, originally expressed. IL s voice was thin, almost like a whine; his gestures were not graceful; but his arguments were to the point and his informa tion was always ample and almost invariably correct. He had probably read more books and newspapers than any ten members of the Lyceum, and had stored their contents in one of the most capacious and retentive memories ever possessed by man. And hence it happened that the youngest member of the Poultney Lyceum became its intellectual leader and its acknowledged authority on disputed points; and this though he never wore a coat, a neck-tie, nor a pair of gloves. Mr. Bliss, before mentioned, gives the following account of the young apprentice at Poultney: "About this time, a sound, well-read theologian and a practical printer was employed to edit and conduct the paper. This opened a desirable school for intellectual culture to our young d/butant. Debates ensued : historical, political, and religious questions were discussed; and often while all hands were engaged at the font of types; and here the purpose for which our young aspirant had read some was made manifest. Such 46 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. was the correctness of his memory in what he had read, in both biblical and profane history, that the reverend gentleman was often put at fault by his corrections. He always quoted chapter and verse to prove the point in dispute. On one occasion the editor said that money was the root of all evil, when he was corrected by the devil, who said he believed it read in the Bible that the love of money was the root of all evil. " A small town library gave him access to books, by which, together with the reading of the exchange papers of the office, he improved all his leisure hours. He became a frequent talker in our village lyceum, and often wrote dissertations. " In the first organization of our village temperance society, the ques tion arose as to the age when the young might become members. Fearing lest his own age might bar him, he moved that they be received when they were old enough to drink which was adopted nem. con. "Though modest and retiring, he was often led into political discus sions with our ablest politicians, and few would leave the field without feeling instructed by the soundness of his views and the unerring correctness of his statements of political events. " Having a thirst for knowledge, he bent his mind and all his energies to its acquisition, with unceasing application and untiring devotion; and I doubt if, in the whole term of his apprenticeship, he ever spent an hour in the common recreation of young men. He used to pass my door as he went to his daily meals, and though I often sat near, or stood in the way, so much absorbed did he appear in his own thoughts his head bent forward and his eyes fixed upon the ground, that I have the charity to believe that the reason why he never turned his head or gave me a look, was becaiise he had no idea I was there!" The notable respect and influence gained by Horace Greeley, even during the years of his apprenticeship, notwithstanding his singular dress and uncouth manners, are happily illustrated by an anecdote told by a distinguished physician of New- York. The physician s story is thus reported by Parton: " Did I ever tell you," he is wont to begin, " how and where I first saw my friend Horace Greeley ? Well, thus it happened. It was one of the proudest and happiest days of my life. I was a country boy then, a farmer s son, and we lived a few miles from East Poultney. On the day in question I was sent by my father to sell a load of potatoes at the store in East Poultney, and bring back various commodities in exchange. Now this was the first time, you must know, that I had ever been entrusted with so important an errand. I had been to the village with my father often enough, but now I was to go alone, and I felt as proud and independent as a midshipman the first time he goes ashore in command of a boat. Big with the fate of twenty bushels of potatoes, off I drove reached the village sold out my load drove round to the tavern put up YOUNG GKEELEY S Toru?r. 47 my horses, and went in to dinner. This going to the tavern on my own account, all by myself, and paying my own bill, was, I thought, the crowning glory of the whole adventure. There were a good many people iit dinner, the sheriff of the county and an ex-member of Congress among them, and I felt considerably abashed at first ; but I had scarcely begun to eat, when my eyes fell upon an object so singular that I could do little else than stare at it all the while it remained in the room. It was a tall, pale, white-haired, gawky boy, seated at the further end of the table. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he was eating with a rapidity and awkward ness that I never saw equalled before nor since. It seemed as if he was eating for a wager, and had gone in to win. He neither looked up nor round, nor appeared to pay the least attention to the conversation. My first thought was, This is a pretty sort of a tavern to let such a fellow as that sit at the same table with all these gentlemen; he ought to come in with the hostler. I thought it strange, too, that no one seemed to notice him, and I supposed he owed his continuance at the table to that circum stance alone. And so I sat, eating little myself, and occupied in watching the wonderful performance of this wonderful youth. At length the conversation at the table became quite animated, turning upon some measure of an early Congress; and a question arose how certain members had voted on its final passage. There was a difference of opinion ; and the sheriff, a very finely-dressed personage, I thought, to my boundless astonishment, referred the matter to the unaccountable Boy, saying, Aint that right, Greeley? No, said the Unaccountable, without looking up, you re wrong. There, said the ex-member, I told you so. And you re wrong, too, said the still-devouring Mystery. Then he laid down his knife and fork, and gave the history of the measure, explained the state of parties at the time, stated the vote in dispute, named the leading advocates and opponents of the bill, and, in short, gave a complete exposition of the whole matter. I listened and wondered; but what surprised me most was, that the company received his statement as pure gospel, and as settling the question beyond dispute as a dictionary settles a dispute respecting the spelling of a word. A minute after, the boy left the dininjr-room, and I never saw him again, till I met him, years J after, in the streets of New- York, when I claimed acquaintance with him as a brother Vermonter, and told him this story, to his great amusement." The future great journalist was so ill clad during his appren ticeship that there are those still living at Poultney -who recollect their feelings of sadness in his behalf, on seeing him walking to the office in the bitter cold mornings of a Yermont Winter. He always walked rapidly, moving as though he were a little too loose in the joints, as they say, and with his gloveless hands in his pockets to protect them from the frost. His homely dress was a constant source of laughter among the 48 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. boys, and it is related that on one occasion when there was to be an unusually interesting debate at the Lyceum, a young man who was noted for the elegance of his toilet and the length of his store account, advised Horace to get a new suit of clothes for the great debate. " !No," said he, " I guess I d better wear my old clothes than run in debt for new ones." And in his homely garb he won the decision in the discussion. Half the sum annually received by Horace Greeley would have provided him with comfortable, presentable clothing. But he had not during his apprenticeship, and never acquired, the slightest regard for his personal appearance. Moreover, he was extremely economical at this period of his life, with the object of aiding his father in his pioneer home. Thither he sent every dollar that he could spare, caring nothing for the laughter of the young and the derision of the thoughtless. By reason of his own hard labour and these timely remittances of his son, Zaccheus Greeley was able to pay all his indebted ness on his farm, and gradually to improve and enlarge it, so that at the time of his death it had become an extensive and valuable estate. During Horace s term of apprenticeship he was allowed a month on two separate occasions to visit the family homestead. This journey of some six hundred miles he accomplished by walking part of the way, and on " line boats " on the Erie canal, whose " cent and a half a mile, mile and a half an hour" many yet remember. "The days passed slowly yet smoothly," he says, " on those gliding arks, being enlivened by various sedentary games ; but the nights were tedious beyond any sleeping-car experience. At daybreak, you were routed out of your shabby, shelf-like berth, and driven on deck to swallow fog^ while the cabin was cleared of its beds and made ready for breakfast." Mr. Greeley decidedly objected to the return of "the good old ways," if they should include line boats and the little tubs which used to do duty as steamboats on Lake Erie, in which he had some disagreeable experiences on these journeys home and return. Horace Greeley s first essays in writing were with neither pen nor pencil. They were set up in types, being directly transferred thereto from his mind while he worked at the case. A FUGITIVE-SLAVE CHASE. 49 They consisted of condensations of news paragraphs and of other articles, for the whole of which there was not room in the paper. An ardent politician and zealous supporter of the Adams party, we may be sure he also contributed political paragraphs and u squibs " to the paper, which was emphatically of his way of thinking. His " dissertations," read before the Lyceum, were his first formal compositions. They were char acterized by being upon practical topics, which were treated in a straight-forward, strong manner, rather than in the orna mental style so prevalent in debating societies and, indeed, with young writers generally. He never blossommed into the flowery style in essays which were to he read. He relates that among the incidents of his sojourn in Poult- ney that made most impression on his mind was " a fugitive slave-chase." A young negro, held as a slave in a neigbouring town of New York, had transported himself to Poultney. and was there minding his business and doing labour, when his " owner," with due official following, came along to arrest and return him. " I never saw," says Mr. Greeley, " so large a muster of men and boys so suddenly on our village-green as his advent incited; and the result was a speedy disappearance of the chattel, and the return of his master, disconsolate and niggerless, to the place whence he came. Everything on our side was impromptu and instinctive; and nobody suggested that envy or hate of the South, or of New York, or of the master, had impelled the rescue. Our people hated injustice and oppression, and acted as if they couldn t help it." Another incident of which he had a fresh recollection alter more than forty years was the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence. Many veterans of the Revolution were present, in whose eyes, as he thought, the recurrence of the nation s anniversary seemed to rekindle " the light of other days." " I doubt." lie remarks, " that Poultney has since been so thrilled with patriotic emotion as on that 4th of July, 1826; and when we learned a few days later, that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the author and the great champion, respectively, of the Declaration, had both died on that day, and that the messengers bearing South 4 50 LIFE OF HORACE /5J and ^orth, respectively, the tidings, of their decease had met in Philadelphia under the sl^actaw of that Hall in which our Independence was declared, it^eeraed that a Divine attestation had solemnly hallowed and-, sanctified the great anniversary by the impressive ministration of Death." And so, upon the wjiole, the years of Horace Greeley s apprenticeship went ^appily by. He had become an excellent printer, though not an uncommonly swift compositor ; he had grown. in stature and in mind; had all the while been an earnest advocate of Temperance and a practical tee-totaler; and had acquired no unfortunate habits and no vices. With the world now all before him where to choose, having acquired a trade by means of which he could reasonably expect to eaT an independent livelihood, he could look back over the years spent in the office of The Northern Spectator with pardonable satisfaction and gratification; with that peculiar happiness which comes of duty conscientiously and well done. " They say," he said, not long before the close of his eventful and influential life, " that apprenticeship is distasteful to, and out of fashion with, the boys of our day: if so, I regret it for their sakes. To the youth who asks, How shall I obtain an education? I would answer, Learn a trade of a good master. I hold firmly that most boys may thus better acquire the knowledge they need than by spending four years in college." CHAPTEK III. A JOURNEYMAN PRINTER. Departure from Poultney Visits his Father Works as a Journeyman at Jamestown and Lodi, New York Chopping Wood Again Em ployed on the Erie (Pennsylvania) Gazette Offered a Partnership; Declines Returns To His Father s In Vain Tries to Procure Work in the West Resolves to Go to New- York Divides his Earnings with his Father The Journey to New -York Arrival Therewith a Cash Capital of Ten Dollars Diligent Search for Work Sets up a " Lean " New Testament Chicken-pox Proof Varied Experience as a Journeyman in the Great City Steady Progress Visits New England Business on his own Account. BY the terms of his contract of apprenticeship, Horace Greeley was to remain in the office of the Northern Spectator until he should become twenty years of age. But in June, 1830. some ten months before the expiration of his apprentice ship, that journal discontinued publication, and the contract by that fact was terminated. He had gone to Poultney an uncouth, unknown youth. Now that he was about to depart, he found that he had many admiring friends, who bade him good-by with unaffected sorrow to part with him, and sin- cerest good wishes for his future. Nearly thirty years after wards he said to more than a hundred thousand readers, when speaking of Poultney: "I have never since known a commu nity so generally moral, intelligent, industrious, and friendly, never one where so much good was known, and so little evil said, of neighbour by neighbour." He shook many a friend by the hand, and stepping into a wagon, proceeded, in company with a friend of like years, to Comstock s Landing, some twelve miles distant, on the Champlain Canal, where they waited, through a dreary day of pelting rain, for a line-boat to take them to Troy, New York, whence they purposed travelling westward to Buffalo, by similar conveyance. 1 1 Mr. Parton makes a most graphic, touching scene of young Greeley s departure from Poultney. He tells how the landlord srave him an overcoat, (51) 52 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. The friends travelled together to a place not far westward of Rochester, whence young Greeley proceeded to Buffalo, by the line-boat, thence by steamboat to Dunkirk. From Dunkirk, the journey was made on foot. It was on this journey that he made his best day s walk, from Fredonia to his father s farm, a distance of forty-five miles over a bad road, equal to fifty of good. He was ever a firm believer in solitary pedestrianism as most favorable to patient meditation and self-improvement. He made a visit of some weeks at home, and then sought work at his trade in various directions, but with indifferent success. He had a situation for a short time at Jamestown, New York, and afterwards, some time, however, inter vening, at Lodi (now Gowanda), where he worked at the case for $11 per month, board included. Here he remained about six weeks, earning in that period about half what a good, steady compositor will now earn in a single week, working on the paper which he established. He accomplished something for the craft. His employer at Lodi could afford to hire a journeyman no longer, and he made a pedestrian journey home, about January 1, 1831. Here he went to work again, chopping, with his father and brother, but, as he says, not very efficiently nor satisfactorily. He became fully convinced that the life of a pioneer was one to which he was poorly adapted. Wherefore, after a month one of bitter cold weather of hard labour in the forest accompanied by a brief speech, worthy of any post-prandial occasion; how the landlady gave him a Bible ; how Horace rose, put his stick through his little bundle, took the overcoat (imaginary) over his other arm, said "good-by," and set off; how his friends followed him with their eyes, until a turn in the road hid the bent and shambling figure from their sight ; how it was a fine, cool, breezy morning in the, month of June, 1830 ; how nature had assumed those robes of brilliant green which she wears only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly smile which plays upon her changeful countenance only when she is attired in her best; how, light of heart and step, the traveller walked on, etc., etc. It is a pity to spoil all this beautiful writing; but it has to be done. In fact, Mr. Grccley did it when he said (Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 75) that lie left Poultney in a wagon, precisely as described in the text above. And the day a day of pelting rain too! Not one of "the ravishing beauties of June." AT ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA. 53 primeval, ho again sought employment in his chosen profession. Accordingly, he visited Erie, Pennsylvania, where he found work on The Gazette of that city at $15 per month, and board. "This was the first newspaper," says Mr. Greeley in his auto biography, "whereon I was employed that made any money for its owner, and thus had a pecuniary value. It had been started twenty years or so before, when borough and county were both thinly peopled, almost wholly by poor young men, and it had grown with the vicinage until it had a substantial, profitable patronage. Its proprietor, Mr. Joseph M. Sterrett, now in the prime of life, had begun on The Gazette as a boy, and grown up with it into general consideration and esteem ; his journeymen and apprentices boarded at his house, as was fit; and I spent here five months industriuosly and agreeably. Though still a raw youth of twenty years, and knowing no one in the borough when I thus entered it, I made acquaintances there who are still valued friends; and before I left, I was offered a partnership in the concern; which, though I had reasons for declining, was none the less flattering as a mark of appreciation and confidence." At length work failed in the Gazette office. He tried to ob tain a situation elsewhere, but, as he says, " the West seemed to be labouring under a surfeit of printers." One was adver tised for to take charge of a journal at Wilkesbarre, Pennsyl vania, and he applied for the place, but without success. " I would gladly have given," he remarks in his Recollections of this period, " faithful labour at case and press through some years yet for $15 a month and board, or even less; but it was not to be had. So, upon full consideration, I decided to turn my steps tosvard the Commercial Emporium, while still con siderably younger than I would have preferred to be on making such a venture." Accordingly he paid a parting visit to his father s, and pre pared for what was reasonbly supposed would be a long absence. Nor were any great preparations necessary. They consisted of his dividing the money he had earned at Erie with his father, remaining a few days at home, and bidding the family good-by. These things done, he started on his journey to New- York, 54 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. with $25 in his pocket, and very little extra clothing in his bundle. It was now midsummer, the weather dry and hot. He turned his face toward the Erie canal, by which he voyaged most of. the way across the State of New York. But at Gaines, some forty miles westward of Rochester, lived the only friend he had in the lung route. He traversed on foot the dusty "ridge road" eastward from Lockport the day before he reached this friend. It was a hot day, and the water he was compelled frequently to drink seemed to him very hard; so that by night-fall he fancied it had covered his mouth and v o throat with a scale like that often found incru sting a long-used tea-kettle. Though the region was gently rolling and very fertile, he should have more enjoyed, he says, a saunter over New Eng land hills and rocks, sweetened by draughts from New England wells and springs. He remained with his friend Saturday night and Sunday till afternoon, when they walked down to the canal together and waited long for a boat. None coming before nightfall he bade his friend good-by, confident that a line-boat would soon heave in sight, bound in the right direc tion. After waiting till near midnight, he started down the tow-path and walked through the pitchy darkness to Brock- port, about fifteen miles, where he took a line-boat in the morning. His sleepy tendencies much amused his fellow-pas- gers, to whom " sparking Sunday night " afforded what was supposed to be the proper explanation. The journeyman in search of work left the canal at Schenec- tady and proceeded on foot to Albany, whence he went by steamboat to New- York, arriving there on the morning of August 17, 1831. The city of New- York was then less than one-third of its present size, and had probably less than one- tenth of its present commercial importance. Brooklyn, the greatest and most magnificent metropolitan development of New- York, was not incorporated as a city until three years afterwards. Not a single railroad reached the city. No line of ocean steamers brought passengers to her hotels nor goods to her merchants from any foreign port. " Still, to my eyes, - gays Mr. Greeley, " which had never till yesterday gazed on a 55 c liy of even 20,000 inhabitants, nor seen a sea-going vessel, her miles square of m^mly bric k or stone houses, and her fforlongs -of masts and .yards, afforded : ample incitement to a wojidor -and admiration ; akm to awe." He was not yet tbwen bygone years old; was : tall, slender, pale, and plain; had ten ifidllarsdn his pocket; Summer clothing worth as much more, ^nearly all on his person; and as complete a knowledge of : printing as could then be gained in country offices. He : frankly admits that his unmistakably rustic manner and ; address did not favour that immediate command of remu nerating employment which was his most urgent need. However, :he -stepped lightly from the b oat, not at all encumbered with luggage, L his personal estate being all tied mpin a .pocket-handkerchief, and, moving rapidly away from the detested hiss of escaping steam, presently found himself \\valking : up Broad street in quest of a boarding-house.- He Centered one near the corner of Wall; but the price of board in that ari-stoeratic establishment was $6 per week, and he followed the suggestion of : the host by immediately proceeding in search of more democratic quarters. Wandering thence, he mover could tell how, to the North River side -of the city, he stopped at an humble edifice whereon the sign " Boarding " caught his eye, and forthwith closed a bargain for shelter and isnbsistenee -at $2.50 per week. His host was Mr. Edward MoGolrick, 0f No. 168 West street, and his establishment was ihalf boarding-house and the remainder grog-shop. It was quietly and decently kept, however, and Mr. McGolrick and family were kind and friendly. The next motion in order, of course, was to .procure employ ment; and the young printer had no sooner taken a hearty breakfast, without meat, than he went forth on the common errand of so many millions of men Asking leave to toil. In Ms ignorance of the city, -he traversed many a street in which he might as well have looked for a shower of larks as for a printing-olfiee. It might appear that he adopted the plan of going through the dity street by street, which was an excellent plan, to give him a knowledge of the metropolis, but added many miles x>f useless walking to one in search of work in a 56 UFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. printing-office. In the course of this da} 7 (which was a Friday) and the next, however, he must have visited, he thought, fully two-thirds of the printing-offices on Manhattan Island, and when the sun went down on Saturday night he had not caught a gleam of success. " It was midsummer," he observes, "when business in New- York is habitually dull; and my youth and unquestionable air of country greenness, must have told against me. When I called at The Journal of Commerce, its editor, Mr. David Hale, bluntly told me I was a runaway apprentice from some country office; which M r as a very natural, though mistaken, presumption. I returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, thoroughly weary, disheart ened, disgusted with New- York, and resolved to shake its dust from my feet next Monday morning, while I could still leave with money in my pocket, and before its almshouse could foreclose upon me. But that was not to be. On Sunday afternoon and evening several young Irishmen called at McGolrick s, in their holiday saunterings about town; and being told that I was a young printer in quest of work, interested themselves in my effort with the spontaneous kind ness of their race. One among them happened to know a place where printers were wanted, and gave me the requisite direction; so that, on visiting the designated spot next morn ing, I readily found employment; and thus, when barely three days a resident, I had found anchorage in New- York." And now it happened that the very "country greenness" which appeared to tell so much against him on Friday and Saturday, was all in his favour on Monday. The establish ment in which he had his first work in New- York was that of John T. West, over the publishing-house of McElrath and Bangs, No. 85 Chatham Street, and the work was at his call simply because no printer who knew the city would accept it. The nature of the work is thus described, and all printers will understand how annoying and " lean " a job it was: "It was the composition of a very small (32mo) New Testament, in double columns, of Agate type, each column barely 12 ems wide, with a centre column of notes in Pearl, only 4 ems wide; the text thickly studded with references by Greek and superior letters to the notes, which ANCHORED EN NEW-YORK. 57 of course were preceded and discriminated by corresponding indices, with prefatory and supplementary remarks on each Book, set in Pearl, and only paid for as Agate. The type was considerably smaller than any to which I had been accustomed ; the narrow measure and thickly sown Italics of the text, with the strange characters employed as indices, rendered it the slowest, and by far the most difficult, work I had ever undertaken; while the making up, proving, and correcting twice, and even thrice over, preparatory to stereotyping, nearly doubled the time required for ordinary composition. I was never a swift type-setter; 1 aimed to be an assiduous and correct one; but my proofs on this work at first looked as though they had caught the chicken-pox, and were in the worst stage of a profuse eruption. For the first two or three weeks, being sometimes kept waiting for letter, I scarcely made my board: while, by diligent type-sticking through twelve to fourteen hours per day, I was able, at my best, to earn but five to six dollars per week. As scarcely another compositor could be induced to work on it more than two days, I had this job in good part to myself ; and I persevered to the end of it. I had removed, very soon after obtaining it, to Mrs. Mason s shoemaker boarding-house at the corner of Chatham and Duane Streets, nearly opposite my work; so that I was enabled to keep doing nearly all the time I did not need for meals and sleep." 2 It is, perhaps, impossible for one not a printer to appreciate the great amount and sublime quality of patience necessary in the composition of such a job. That Horace Greeley did not therefrom imbibe a detestation of the New Testament must be regarded as proof conclusive that his faith in its inspiration and truth was most h rmly and deeply anchored in his mind. Having completed the Testament, he was again without employment for about a fortnight, notwithstanding he made daily efforts to find more. He thus had an opportunity of attending, as a spectator, the sittings of a Tariff Convention, which was held at this time in the American Institute, and presided over by Hon. William Wilkins, of Pennsylvania. His next work was on a monthly magazine, printed on Ann Street; but the periodical soon deceased, and he was left with out his wages. The next month saw him back at West s, on Chatham Street, and again employed on a religious work, a commentary on the book of Genesis by the Rev. George Bush. Of this the chirography was blind; the author made * Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 80. 58 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. many vexatious alterations in proof; the page was small and the type close; but though the reverse of fat, in printers jargon, it was not nearly so abominably lean as the Testament, and he regretted to reach the end of it. Again thrown out of employment he seriously meditated engaging in some other business than printing, and probably would have done so had any other business offered him a chance. But the season was unusually cold. There was an ice-blockade. All branches of trade sympathized with printing, and were exceptionally dull. So, perforce, he stuck to his u stick," and the commercial world thereby lost the making of a poor merchant, and gained a great journalist. The next situation, continuing for any considerable period, which young Greeley obtained was in the office of The Spirit of the Times, a weekly journal, established about the begin- ing of the year 1832, by Messrs. William T. Porter and James Howe, two young printers, of whom the former had worked with Greeley at West s. The Spirit was devoted to sporting intelligence, and was from the beginning a first-rate paper of its kind. Mr. Porter became celebrated as a writer and au thority in all sporting matters, and the journal still flourishes under the editorship of Mr. George Wilkes, and has long been confessedly at the head of American publications whose prin cipal object is the circulation of sporting intelligence. That the editorial scope of the paper has not been "cabined, cribbed, and confined," however, to a single specialty, may be con cluded from the fact that, during the late war of the rebellion, the ablest criticisms upon its conduct and the most searching expositions of its military imbeciles, appeared in Wilkes s Spirit. When Horace Greeley worked as a compositor in the office, it was just beginning a precarious existence. He as sisted, it seems, in the composition of the first number. He says: "I think it was a little after midnight, on the 1st of January, 1832, that we compositors delivered the forms of the first number into the hands of the pressmen in an upper story in Fulton street. The concern migrated to Wall street the next March, finding a location very near the present site of the Merchants Exchange; and I clung to it through the ensuing TALKING AND TYPE-SETTING. 59 Spring and Summer; its foreman, Francis Y. Story, being nearly of my own age, and thenceforth my devoted friend. But the founders and editors were also quite young; they were inexperienced in their calling, without capital or influential friends, having recently drifted from the country to the city much as I did; and their paper did not pay, I know it was difficult to make it pay me, especially through the dreary cholera Summer of 1S32." The city of New- York was never paralyzed as it was during that Summer. The disease was new, and the accounts of its recent ravages abroad were calculated to appal the stoutest heart. Those who could get away, left the city; scarcely any one entered it; trade was dead and industry languished. Hor ace Greeley sometimes met two if not three palanquins, bear ing cholera patients to some hospital, in his short walk from dinner on Chatham street to his work on Wall street. One died at his boarding-house. But the terrible epidemic passed oft* as cool evenings came on, and fugitives and business re turned; and all, save the dead and the bereaved, was as before. Horace Greeley had now been in New- York, a journeyman printer, a little more than a year. He had not all the time been engaged at his trade, but had never been idle. His ex perience as a journeyman was similar to his experience as an apprentice. Hi a awkward manners, his singular dress, brought upon him some ridicule, and his simplicity and good nature made him "game" for many an innocent practical joke (if there be such a thing as an innocent practical joke). Yet he was greatly respected on account of his faithfulness and skill as a printer, and his superior talents and intelligence. He was a great talker, and, what is more, he could constantly talk while setting type without its at all interfering with the correctness or dispatch of his work. Not a few printers have been able thus to carry on two trains of ideas at the same time, but few so wonderfully as Horace Greeley. It seemed that his talking did not at all interfere with his type-setting, nor type-setting with his conversation. He still wore clothes of the most out landish fits, and continued to expend precious little money upon his person. He did not misspend any of his earnings 60 UFE OF HORACE GREELEY. and constantly remitted a considerable portion of them to his father. Nor did he, though he always had money by him, ex hibit the least symptom of avarice or closeh stedness. Never a fellow-printer in need applied to him for help whom he did not assist, and in his generous nature he loaned many of them money when it would have doubtless been better for them had he withheld it, allowing them to learn, perforce, the value and wisdom of a thoughtful economy. His own expenses had been surprisingly small, ever since his arrival in New- York, so that, notwithstanding his remittances home, he was able during the autumn of the year under review to revisit the scenes of his early life. He left New- York early in October and by way of Provi dence and Boston travelled back to "the old Londonderry hive." Here he spent some days with uncles, aunts, and cousins, having merry times gathering fruits in the orchards, and graping in the forests. His relatives were widely scat tered over southern New-Hampshire, and some of them were in eastern Vermont. But he went to see them all, and all were right glad to welcome him to their homes and hearts. These journeys were made on foot, and added new zest to an appetite naturally good. "Reaching Stoddard," he says, " I stepped in to a convenient tavern and called for dinner. My breakfast had been quite early; the keen air and rough walk had freshened my appetite; I was shown into a dining-room with a well- spread table in the centre, and left to help myself. There were steaks, chickens, tea, coffee, pies, etc., and i did ample justice to all. What is to pay? I asked the landlord on re-entering the bar-room. l . Dinner 18f cents, he replied. I laid down the required sum, and stepped off, mentally resolving that I would, in mercy to that tavern, never patronize it again." He returned to New- York by the route he went, in time to vote the an ti- Jackson ticket at the Presidential election. After this he was employed by Mr. J. S. Redfield, since, the eminent publisher, who was then conducting a stereotyping establish ment. The work was agreeable and the pay good as well as prompt, so that the close of his experience as a journeyman was highly pleasant and satisfactory. Near the end of this AT WORK AGAIN. 61 year lie made arrangements to enter into business on his own account. But before describing his first ventures in printing and pub lishing for himself, let us review the course of his life thus far, o as respects moral, political, and religious questions. CHAPTEK IV. SOCIAL MORALS FAITH POLITICS. Horace Greeley a Born Reformer A New England Pioneer of Tem perance Opposition to the Use of Tobacco His Religious Faith His Own Statement as to How He Became a Universalist A Very Young Politician Discussion of the Slavery Question in 1819-20 An Anti- Slavery Boy The "Era of Good Feeling" Era of Per- sonal - Preference Parties Election of John Quincy Adams to the Presidency The " Anti - Mason " Excitement Jackson Elected President in 1828 Defeat of Henry Clay in 1832 Horace Greeley Goes into Business for Himself. HORACE GREKLEY, with his Puritan lineage, New England birth, and early associations, could hardly have helped growing up without the development of a real respect for virtue, pure morality, and such reforms as might seem to have in view the practical good of men and the honour of human nature. There are those, and they constitute the majority, who profess to believe in " letting well enough alone." There are others, and they constitute, as yet in the history of the world, the select minority, who believe in making well enough better, and then best. Horace Greeley was born in the select minority. The majority would do well enough if they really believed wlxat they say; but when their profession is translated into fact, we too often discover that they only believe in letting things alone, unless they are so bad as to be absolutely unendurable. With them a reformer and a destruc- tionist are precisely the same; and they are constantly fretting, not that well enough but bad enough may be attacked, van quished, and put in utter rout. They are as afraid of those eternal irrepressible conflicts by which alone progress is eliminated, and improvement made in our social, moral, and political systems and institutions, as a hurt duck is of gun powder. If they were to have their way, Galileo himself, (62) A TEMPERANCE BOY-. 63 were he to rise from the dead, could not discover that the world moves, and would surely be executed if he should say that it did. Whether it was from the blood descended from those who had been engaged in the strife of the old siege of Derry, or however we may account for it, it is certain that Horace Greeley was born a fighter. Certainly no one ever lived who had more repugnance to physical conflict, brawls of any kind, cruelty in any form; and no military chieftain ever fought his foe more bravely than he contended against the systems by which such and many other evils are made not only possible but common. He was an intellectual combatant, and used the weapons of the mind, argument, appeal, condemnatory criticism, eloquence, invective, wit, humour, etc. from a very early period in his life. Up to the time thereof which we have now reached in this biographical sketch the most notable instance of his native-born character of reformer was upon the subject of Temperance. He had never received any sound teachings upon the sub ject even in theory, certainly not in practice. From the day of his birth to his developing manhood he lived in com munities, where drinking spirituous liquors was regarded by nearly every one, whether of the clergy or laity, not only as well enough, but as a duty, or, at any rate, as a physical necessity. He expressly tells us in his Recollections, that during his childhood there was no merry-making, no enter tainment of relatives or friends, scarcely a casual gathering of two or three neighbours for an evening s social chat, without strong drink. Cider, always, while it remained drinkable, rum at all seasons and on all occasions, were expected and provided. The universality of the custom of drinking then prevailing cannot be better shown than by Mr. Greeley s own description : " No house or barn was raised without a bountiful supply of the latter, and generally of both. A wedding without toddy, flip, sling, or punch, with rum undisguised in abundance, would have been deemed a poor, mean affair, even among the penniless; while the more fortunate and thrifty of course dispensed wine, brand}", and gin in profusion. 64 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Dancing almost the only pastime wherein the sexes jointly partici pated was always enlivened and stimulated by liquor. Militia train ings then rigidly enforced at least twice a year usually wound up with a drinking frolic at the village tavern. Election days were drinking days, as they still too commonly are ; and even funerals were regarded as inadequately celebrated without the dispensing of spirituous consolation : so that I distinctly recollect the neighbourhood talk, in 1820, after the funeral of a poor man s child, that, if he had not been mean as well as poor, he would have cheered the hearts of his sympathizing friends by treating them to at least one gallon of rum. I have heard my father say that he had mowed through the haying season of thirty successive years, and never a day without liquor; and the account of an Irishman who mowed and pitched throughout one haying, drinking only buttermilk, while his associates drank rum, yet accomplished more, and with less fatigue, than any of them, was received with as much wondering incre dulity as though it had been certified that he lived wholly on air. Nay : we had an ordination in Amherst nearly fifty years ago, settling an able and popular young clergyman named Lord (I believe he is now the venerable ex-President of Dartmouth College) to the signal satisfaction of the great body of our people; and, according to my recollection, strong drink was more generally and bountifully dispensed than on any previous occasion; bottles and glasses being set on tables in front of many farmers houses as an invitation to those who passed on their way to or from the installation to stop and drink freely. We -have worse liquor now than we had then; and delirium tremens, apoplexy, palsy, &c., come sooner and oftener to those who use it ; but our consumers of strong drink are a class ; whereas they were then the whole people. The pious probably drank more discreetly than the ungodly; but they all drank to their own satisfaction, and, I judge, more than was consistent with their personal good." As it was in the region in which Horace Greeley was reared, so it was elsewhere throughout the country. IS or was there a single association in the whole land which adopted the prin ciple and practice of Total Abstinence until some time after he had outspelled all the spellers of Londonderry and Amherst. The American Temperance Society was yet totally unknown, and did not place total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages in its creed until after Horace Greeley had entered the print ing business for himself in ]S r ew-York. He was in a glorious minority of one, therefore, and that one only a lad of thirteen years of age, when, on the first day of January, 1824, he deliberately resolved to drink no more distilled liquors. It is doubtful whether at this time he had ever heard of a Tern- A FIONKKR IN TEMPERANCE 65 perance Society; it would be remarkable indeed if he had, seeing that a Temperance Society in those days was rara avis in terris, so rare a bird on earth, in fact, as to have yet made no visible chirp or flutter. This resolution the lad faithfully kept. On one occasion, indeed, when the neighbours and their boys were collected together in considerable number, at the annual sheep-shearing, his resolve was universally con demned, and some liquor was forced down his throat by several youngsters older than himself, the last, unquestiona bly, which ever found passage by that route. We have already seen that he took an active part in the for mation of the first Temperance Society in Poultney, and moved, when the question of age of membership was up for determination, that any one might be received who was old enough to drink. This faculty of putting a clear argument in a motion, or a single statement, he always possessed in large development. He took an influential part in the progress of the Temperance cause in Poultney, and when he left that vil lage at the close of his apprenticeship there were many adherents of the new reform in town and country. The mental process by which young Horace Greeley. being a born reformer, reached the principle of total abstinence, can be easily traced. He perceived that the use of liquor was accompanied and fol lowed by much evil, and by no good; that it dragged many a man down to poverty, misery, dishonour, and never raised an unfortunate man to his feet, to lead him into ways of pleasant ness and paths of peace. He perceived that one of the first diities of all good men is self-denial. He therefore correctly and logically placed Total Abstinence as among the Christian duties; among the duties pf all who would by precept and ex ample make the world somewhat better for their having lived in it. About the time he set up his own establishment in Xew-York, this Reform, of which he was one of the first pio neers in New-England, had begun to receive considerable public attention, and soon exerted a beneficent influence throughout most portions of the nation. Another evil touching our social morals and manners which he very heartily condemned, was the use of tobacco. His 5 66 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. language in condemnation of this habit was always even un commonly energetic, and he never used the weed in any shape, nor could placidly endure the use of it by others. Herein, and perhaps herein only, he was "thin-skinned." But it was the result of physical feeling rather than of reasoning. His antipathy began before he was old enough to reason much. When he was four years old, going to school from his grand father Woodburn s, a party of visitors went off to a neigh bour s, leaving some stumps of cigars on table and mantle. These the youngsters smoked, witli what result can well be imagined. Horace was almost deathly sick and from that day forth had nothing but intense disgust for the cause of his boyish indiscretion and affliction. Other evils, or supposed evils, of a like nature, tending, as he thought, to diminish the social happiness and virtue of men, he subsequently combatted with the fervour of the Reform spirit. I now approach a subject of great delicacy, but one which cannot be avoided by those who desire to have something like a complete picture of Horace Greeley s life and character. It will be generally agreed, perhaps, that one s religious faith is pre-eminently one s own matter; to be regarded among gen tie- men as a sacred thing. Happily, Mr. Grecley treated of this subject fully and clearly during his lifetime, leaving no doubt as to his general opinions. Whether they be correct or whether they be erroneous, they were Ids ; and I do not see how they could possibly be set forth with more fairness than in his own words. In his "Recollections of a Busy Life" he devotes a chapter to" "My Faith," which is herewith transcribed in full, and of course without either approval or disapproval. It is as follows : "I must have been about ten years old, when, in some school-book, whereof I have forgotten the name, I first read an account of the treat ment of the Athenians by Demetrius, called Poliorcetcs (Destroyer of Cities), one of the successors of Macedonia s madman. I cannot re-dis cover that account; so I must be content with the far tamer and less vivid narration of the French historian Rollin : HIS FAITH. 67 u Demetrius had withdrawn himself to Ephesus after the Battle of Ipsus [wherein he was routed] and thence embarked for Greece; his whole resources being trusted to the affection of the Athenians, with whom he had left his fleet, money, and wie Deidamia. But he was strangely surprised and oft euded when he was met on his way by ambassadors from the Athenians, who came to apprise him that he could not be admitted into their city, because the people had, by a decree, prohibited the reception of any of the kings; they also informed him that his consort, Deidamia. had been conducted to Megura with all the honours and attendance due to her dignity. Demetrius was then sensible of the value of honours and homages extorted by fear, and which did not proceed from the will. The posture of his affairs not permitting him to revenge the perfidy of that people, he con tented himself with intimating his complaints to them in a moderate manner, and demanded his galleys ; with which, as soon as he had received them, he sailed toward the Chersonesus. " " Not many months elapsed before, through one of those strange and sudden mutations which were frequent throughout his career, the fortunes of Demetrius were completely restored, and he was enabled to settle his running account with those who had proved so treacherous in his adver sity. I return here to the narration of Rollin: " Athens, as we have already observed, had revolted from Demetrius, and shut her gates against him. But, when that prince thought he had sufficiently provided for the security of his territories in Asia, he moved against that rebellious and ungrateful city, with a resolution to punish her as she deserved. The first year was devoted to the conquest of the Messenians, and of some other cities which hud quitted his party; but he returned the next, season to Athens, which he closed, blocked up, and reduced to the last extrem ity, by cutting off all influx of provisions. A fleet of a hundred and fifty sail, sent by king Ptolemy to succour the Athenians, and which appeared off the coast of JEgina, afforded them but a transient joy; for, when this naval force saw a strong fleet arrive from Peloponnesus to the assistance of Demetrius, besides a great number of other vessels from Cyprus, and that the whole amounted to three hundred, they weighed anchor and fled. Although the Athenians had issued a decree by which they made it a capital offence for any person even to mention a peace with Demetrius, the extremity to which they were reduced obliged them to open their gates to him. When he entered the city, he com manded the inhabitants to assemble in the theatre, which he surrounded with armed troops, and posted his guards on either side of the stage where the dramatic pieces were wont to be performed ; and then descending from the upper part of the theatre, in the manner usual with actors, he showed himself to the multitude, who seemed more dead than alive, and awaited the event in inexpressible terror, expecting it would prove their sentence to destruction; but he dissipated their apprehensions by the first words he uttered; for he did not raise his voice like a man enraged, nor deliver himself in any passionate or insulting terms; but softened the tones of his voice, and only addressed to them gentle complaints and amicable expostulation.. He pardoned their offence and re stored them to his favour, presenting them, at the same time, with 100,000 measures of corn [wheat], and reinstating such magistrates as were most airreeable to them. The joy of this people may be easily conceived from the terrors with which they were previously affected; and how glorious must that prince be who coald always support so admirable a character! " - Reflecting with admiration on this exhibition of a magnanimity too rare in human annals, I was moved to inquire if a spirit so nobly, so wisely, transcending the mean and savage impulse which man too often disguises as justice, when it is in essence revenge, might not be reverently termed Divine ; and the firm conclusion to which I was finally led, imported that the old Greek s treatment of vanquished rebels or prostrate enemies 68 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. must forcibly image and body fortli that of the King immortal, invisible, and only wise God. " When I reached this conclusion, I had never seen one who was called, or who called himself, a Uuiversalist; and I neither saw one, nor read a page of any one s writings, for years thereafter. I had only heard that there were a few graceless reprobates and scurvy outcasts, who pretended to believe that all men would be saved, and to wrench the Scriptures into some sort of conformity to their mockery of a creed. I had read the Bible through, much of it repeatedly, but when quite too infantile to form any coherent, definite synopsis of the doctrines I presumed to be taught therein. But, soon after entering a printing-office, I procured exchanges with several Universalist periodicals, and was thenceforth familiar with their methods of interpretation and of argument, though I first heard a sermon preached by one of this school, while passing through Buffalo, about 1830 ; and I was acquainted with no society, and no preacher, of this faith, prior to my arrival in New- York in August, 1831; when I made my way, on the first Sunday morning of my sojourn, to the little chapel in Grand Street, near Pitt, about the size of an average country school- house, where Rev. Thomas J. Sawyer, then quite young, ministered to a congregation of, perhaps, a hundred souls; to which congregation I soon afterwards attached myself: remaining a member of it until he left the city. " I am not, therefore, to be classed with those who claim to have been converted from one creed to another by studying the Bible alone. Cer tainly, upon re-reading that book in the light of my new convictions, I found therein abundant proof of their correctness in the averments of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and of the Messiah himself. But not so much in particular passages, however pertinent and decisive, as in the spirit and general scope of the Gospel, so happily blending inexorable punishment for every offence with unfailing pity and ultimate forgiveness for the chastened transgressor, thus saving sinners from sin by leading them, through suffering, to loathe and forsake it ; and in laying down its Golden Rule, which, if of universal application (and why not?), must be utterly inconsistent with the infliction of infinite and unending torture as the penalty of transient, and often ignorant, offending, did I find ample warrant for my hope and trust that all suffering is disciplinary and transitional, and shall ultimately result in universal holiness and consequent happiness. "In the light of this faith, the dark problem of Evil, is irradiated, and virtually solved. Perfect through suffering was the way traced out for the great Captain of our salvation: then why not for all the children of Adam? To say that temporary affliction is as difficult to reconcile with divine goodness as eternal agony is to defy reason and insult common sense. The history of Joseph s perfidious sale into slavery by his brethren, and the Divine overruling of that crime into a means of vast and per manent blessings to the entire family of Jacob, is directly in point. Once conceive that an Omniscient Beneficence presides over and directs ms FAITH. 69 the entire course of human affairs, leading ever onward and upward to universal purity and bliss, and all evil becomes phenomenal and pre parative, a mere curtain or passing cloud, which hides for a moment the light of the celestial and eternal day. " I am not wise enough, even in my own conceit, to assume to say where and when the deliverance of our race from evil and suffering shall be consummated. Perceiving that many leave this stage of being depraved and impenitent, I cannot believe that they will be transformed into angels of purity by the intervention of a circumstance so purely physical and involuntary as death. Holding that the government of God is everywhere and always perfect (however inadequate may be our com prehension of it) I infer that, alike in all worlds, men will be chastised whenever they shall need to be, and that neither by suicide, nor any other device, can a single individual escape the penalty of his evil-doing. If man is punished because he needs to be, because that is best for him, why should such discipline be restricted to this span of life? While I know that the words translated hell, eternal, etc., in our version of the Bible, bear various meanings which the translators have be fogged, giving hell, the grave, the pit, etc., as equivalents of the one Hebrew term that signifies the unseen home of departed souls, and while I am sure that the luxuriant metaphors whereby a state of anguish and suffering are depicted were not meant to be taken literally, I yet realize that human iniquity is often so flagrant and enormous that its punishment, to be just and efficient, must be severe and protracted. How or where it will be inflicted are matters of incident and circumstance, not of principle nor of primary consequence. Enough that it will be administered by One who doth not willingly (that is, wantonly) afflict nor grieve the children of men, but because their own highest good demands it, and would be prejudiced by his withholding it. But I do not dogmatize nor speculate. I rest in a more assured conviction of what Tennyson timidly, yet impressively, warbles, in mourning the death of his beloved friend: " O, yet we trnst that, somehow, good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; " That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void. When God hath made the pile complete; " "That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth, with vain desire. Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another s gain ! " Behold! We know not anything: I can but trust that good shall fall At last, far off, at last, to all, And every Winter change to Spring. 70 LIFE OF HORACE UREELEY. "Twentv years earlier Mrs. Hemaus, when on the brink of the angelic life, was blest with a gleam from within the celestial gates, and, in almost her last sonnet, faintly refracted it as follows : "OK RECORDS OF IMMATURE GENIUS. " O, judge in thoughtful tenderness of those Who, richly dowered for life, are called to die Ere the soul s tlame, through storms, hath won repose In truth s divinest ether, still and high! Let their mind s riches claim a trustful sigh; Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain, First notes of some yet struggling harmony By the strong rush, the crowding joy and pain Of many inspirations met and held From its true sphere. O soon it might have swelled Majestically forth ! Nor douht that He Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve Those links of music, elsewhere will evolve Their grand, consummate hymn, from passion-gusts made free! " If I pronounce timid and tentative these and many kindred utterances of modern poets, I mean only that the great truth, so obscurely hinted by one, and so doubtiugly asserted by the other, had long before been more firmly grasped, and more boldly proclaimed, by seers like Milton and Pope, and has in our age been affirmed and systematically elucidated by the cairn, cogent reasoning of Ballou, the critical research of Balfour, the fervid eloquence of Chapin, and hundreds beside them, until it is no longer a feeble hope, a trembling aspiration, a pleasing hypothesis, but an assured and joyful conviction. In its clear daylight, the hideous Inquisi tion, and all kindred devices for torturing heretics, under a libellous pretence of zeal for God, shrink and cower in shame and terror; the revolting gallows hides itself from public view, preliminary to its utter and final disappearance; and man, growing ashamed of all cruelty and revenge, deals humanely with the outcast, the pauper, the criminal, and the vanquished foe. The overthrow of a rebellion is no longer the signal for sweeping spoliation and massacre : the downfall of an ancient tyranny like that of Naples is followed by no butchery of its pertinacious uphold ers ; and our earth begins to body forth and mirror but so slowly, so faintly ! the merciful doctrines oT the meek and loving Prince of Peace. " Perhaps I ought to add, that, with the great body of the Universalists of our day (who herein differ from the earlier pioneers in America of our faith), I believe that our God is one Lord, that though there be that are called gods, as there be gods many and lords many, to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things ; and I find the relation between the Father and the Saviour of mankind most fully and clearly set forth in that majestic first chapter of Hebrews, which I cannot see how any Trinitarian can ever have intently read, without perceiving that its whole tenour and burden are directly at war with his conception of three persons in one God. Nor can I see how Paul s express assertion, that when all things shall be A YOUNG POLITICIAN. 71, subdued unto him, then shall the Son himself also be subject to Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all, is to be reconciled with the more popular creed. However, I war not upon others convic tions, but rest satisfied with a simple statement of my own." Most American citizens of the rural districts are active politicians. They have a good deal of spare time on their hands, which, as a rule, they spend in political discussion; whereas the residents of cities occupy similar hours, in which they are not actively engaged in business, at the theatre, social gatherings, the lecture room, the meeting for this, that, or the other benevolent object, etc., etc. It is probably true that nine-tenths of the talk among the male citizens of the coun try, and small towns and cities of the United States, would bo found to embrace political subjects only: the conduct of national, State, and local government; the partizan issues of the day; the characters of representative men, and cognate topics. Horace Greeley was an eager reader of everything he could get to read, especially newspapers, from early childhood ; and he frankly admits that the result was, he was an ardent politician before he was half old enough to vote. It is a noteworthy fact that the first political struggle in which his sympathies were earnestly enlisted was upon the subject of slavery. It may appear singular to many persons that a boy only eight or nine years old should take hearty interest in a topic of so grave a nature; but the occasion which brought forth a national agitation of the subject at this time was the proposed admission of Missouri into the Union as a slave State, a measure which was very generally regarded, perhaps, throughout the Torth as politically wrongful, and as foreboding danger to the republic. It was discussed at every fireside; by every journal; by every public speaker. The pulpit thundered against the measure as involving national immorality and a turpitude so palpable that it might justly call forth the indignation of Heaven. When, therefore, we consider the nature of the question, of American rural com munities then and now. and that they were unusually agitated, it will not be considered strange, after all, that a boy so singularly observant, intelligent, and thoughtful beyond his 72 LIFE OF HORACE OEEELEY. years as Horace Greeley should have both reflected and talked a good deal on "the Missouri Question." He became an ar dent anti-slavery boy at this time; and, it need hardly be added, the ardour grew with years and failed not to be clearly mani fested until the final triumph of Emancipation. The storm which grew out of this question of the admission of Missouri was reduced to temporary calm by the famous " Compromise," whereby, though Missouri was admitted as a slave State, slavery in the public domain lying north of the latitude of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, the parallel of the southern boundary of the State, was forever prohibited. We shall hereafter see that those who in 1819-20 denounced the Com promise as a delusion, and as a mere makeshift measure of postponement, were in the right. Among these was the lad, Horace Greeley. The administration of president Monroe has been often styled an "era of good feeling." He had been elected to the second term without opposition. The questions which had, in the early history of the nation, divided the peo ple into parties of opposing policies and dogmas,, had been settled in favour of the party which had taken the name of Republican ; and it was not long after the close of our last war with Great Britain that the political organization which had opposed it passed out of existence; as was clearly manifested by the last election of Monroe. Then followed for a brief period after the recognized era of good feeling what may be described as the "Era of Personal-Preference Parties." In the first Presidential contest of this era, that of 1824, young Greeley, now a lad of some thirteen summers, but already beginning to be considered a sort of living cyclopedia of poli tics and walking embodiment of statistical tables, manifested an intelligent interest, which, had political knowledge and judgment been the test of franchise, would have given him better title to vote than a great majority of voters. During this campaign there were five candidates for the Presidency, namely, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson. Of these, the first was Secretary of State in President Monroe s cabinet; the second, Secretary of the Treasury; the third. Secretary of War; A YOUNG POLITICIAN. 73 the fourth, Speaker of the House of Representatives ; the fifth, the hero of ^New Orleans." Mr. Calhoun withdrew as a presidential candidate, before election. To show how entirely obliterated were party lines, so far as concerned distinct meas ures of national polity, it is only necessary to state that each of the candidates cordially sustained the general measures of the administration. Our living cyclopedia of politics sympa thized with Xew England, and preferred Mr. Adams. It is well known that the States failed to elect through the electoral college, and that the House of Representatives, voting by States, chose Mr. Adams President. In the next Presidential campaign, young Greeley, at this time an apprentice in the office of a journal which espoused the Adams cause, took a still greater interest. There had been as yet no national convention an invention not made until some years afterwards publishing proclamation of plat form. Citizens still divided themselves into "Adams men" on the one side and "Jackson men" on the other; an exceed- ino"lv convenient nomenclature, since it allowed the adherents O . of either candidate to advocate such veiws as might be popular in their respective localities. And by this time those ques tions of domestic policy, which afterwards formed the issues, though not always honestly and distinctly drawn, between the parties which adopted the names of Democratic and Whig had begun to be discussed by the people. This was also the period of a singular episode in American politics. One Morgan, a printer and publisher, had published a book professing to expose the secrets- of the order of Free Masons. Curiosity caused a large demand for the book, and Morgan concluded to put rnone\ in his purse by publishing another, which, it was announced, would reveal a terrible state of things, showing that Free Masonry was a great enormity. But before this book appeared, Mr. Morgan disappeared. Whereupon it was alleged that he had been secretly made way with by the Free Masons ! It is difficult to imagine the ex citement which grew out of this affair all over the i^orth and West. "Anti -Masonry" became much of a social frenzy and was especially strong in the State of Vermont. It is not won- 74 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. derf ul, therefore, that young Greelej became an ardent " anti- Mason." So strongly, indeed, were his feelings wrought up by the contagious frenzy, that he remained an opponent of secret societies during his lifetime. It may not be out of place to say here that in 1831, an " anti-Mason" national con vention was held, at Baltimore, which upon this issue nomi nated the distinguished William Wirt for the Presidency. In the election of the following year he carried only the State of Vermont, casting seven electoral votes. This singular political issue, as it came to be in 1832, had much influence, doubtless, in the campaign of 1828, when parties as yet had no general name, but, as we have seen, tho supporters of the two Presidential candidates passed by the name of "Adams men" and "Jackson men" respectively. General Jackson was successful, by a large majority of both popular and electoral votes, to the great regret of our apprentice at Poultriey. During the period in which Horace Greeley had now taken an intelligent interest in politics, Henry Clay had made a number of his most brilliant speeches, had been Secretary ot State under President John Quincy Adams, and had become the most distinguished advocate, perhaps, of a system of in ternal improvements by appropriations from the federal treas ury; of a National Bank; of the protection of American manufactures by means of high customs duties upon imported merchandise. He was also believed to be hostile to slavery, and was quite generally regarded throughout the North as an earnest enemy of its extension. The anti-Jackson men, now called "National Republicans," as their opponents began to be called " Democrats," usually with a "Jackson" prefix, nominated Mr. Clay for the Presidency. Horace Greelcy s "anti-Masonry" was not so strong as his National Republic anism, and he laboured and voted for " Harry of the West " with the greatest zeal. The political opinions and the personal admiration manifested by his first vote were a part of himself, and, many will think, not the most admirable part, till the day of his death. His intense admiration of a statesman so superficial as Henry Clay cannot but be regarded by many as ADMIRATION OF HENRY CLAY. 75 one of his most amiable and unphilosophical characteristics. He was deeply chagrinned at the success of General Jackson, whose sterling qualities he never learned fully to appreciate; but by the beginning of the following year was able to under take to carry on a printing office on his own account, with cheerfulness and confidence. CHAPTER V. BUSINESS VENTURES IN NEW-YORK. Partnership with Francis V. Story A Bank Note Reporter and The Morning Post Failure of the Penny Daily Dr. Shepard Mr. Schols Weathering the Storm Partner Drowned in East River Mr. Jonas Winchester, next Partner The New-Yorker The City Political Contest of 1834 Prints and Partially Edits a Campaign Paper A Grahainite " Boarding -House Marriage Clay, Cal- houn, Crittenden Severe Struggle with the Hard Times of 1837 The New-Yorker Continued, though Burdened by Debt Finally It Goes Up in Flame and Smoke. THE stress of circumstances had driven Horace Greeley to New- York a year or two sooner than he would have made the venture had he been in a more independent situation. He tells us that he was in like manner impelled to undertake the responsibilities of business sooner than he otherwise would have done. For, when he went into business, he was not yet twenty-two years of age, and the amount of his savings was very small, notwithstanding his economical habits; all the smaller, because he had constantly remitted generous propor tions to his father to aid him in his struggles with the stubborn wilderness. Though Mr. Greeley had improved upon his original rustic ways and "outlandish get-up," he was still an awkward, bashful? young man, and as odd a looking specimen for business in the great city, as, perhaps, the metro polis ever saw withal. But he had great affection for and confidence in his friend and fellow- workman, Mr. Francis V. Story, who, though little older than himself, had also been accustomed to struggling with difficulties, was well acquainted with city ways, was of a hopeful, bouoyent nature, and enterprising spirit. lie appears to have happily appreciated Greeley from the beginning of their acquaintance. He had for some time purposed to start (70) FIRST BUSINESS VENTURE. 77 a small printing establishment, and, determining to do so late in the year 1832, offered his friend a partnership in the proposed concern. The arguments in favour of the enterprise briefly were: Mr. Story s position on the Spirit of the Times had made him well acquainted with Mr. S. J. Sylvester, at the time a leading broker of Wall street, and seller of lottery- tickets, who issued a weekly " Bank-Note Reporter," and who offered Story the job of printing that publication. Here was a certainty of some regular income. Story had also become acquainted with Dr. II. D. Shepard, a recent graduate, under stood to be possessed of money and an idea then novel, namely, the publication of a cheap daily paper to be sold about the streets. In this idea Story became a believer, and urged Greeley to unite with him on the strength of Mr. Sylvester s and Dr. Shepard s proffered work. Mr. Greeley hesitated, but at length entered into the arrangement, and the partners hired part of two rooms on the southwest corner of Nassau and Liberty streets (opposite the present city Post Office), and the house of Story & Greeley, Printers, was established. It was an establishment of humble pretensions. The " little all," in cash " capital " of the partners consisted of less than two hundred dollars, and they were compelled to stretch their credit to the utmost for the requisite materials. As illustra ting the embarrassments under which the new firm was started into business, the following incident, related by Mr. Greeley, will be found interesting and instructive: " I tried Mr. James Conner, the extensive type-founder in Ann Street, having a very slight acquaintance with him, formed in the course of fre quent visits to his foundry in quest of sorts (type found deficient in the several offices for which I had worked at one time or another), but he, after hearing me patiently, decided not to credit me six months for the $40 worth of type I wanted of him ; and he did right, my exhibit did not justify my request. I went directly thence to Mr. George Bruce, the older and wealthier founder, in Chambers Street, made the same exhibit, and was allowed by him the credit 1 asked: and that purchase has since secured to his concern the sale of not less than $50,000 wortli of type. I think he must have noted something in my awkward, bashful ways, that impelled him to take the risk." 78 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. The first notable joti printed by Story & Greeley was The Morning Post newspaper, of which Dr. Shepard was editor and publisher. It appeared on the morning of January 1, 1833. It had not been advertised at all. The day was an unfortunate one for such a venture, few people in New- York then or since caring to read much on New Year s day. Moreover, the weather was extremely cold, and the streets were almost blockaded by a heavy fall of snow the previous night. And so the sales of The Morning Post and the mer cury in the thermometers were very little above zero. The price of the paper was two cents. It was afterwards reduced to one cent, and is said to have been the first penny paper in the world. It soon transpired that Dr. Shepard was without means, being barely able to meet the expenses of the concern for a single week. It was not well edited, had no reporters worth mentioning, no correspondents, and attained a circula tion of only a few hundred copies. The publisher having stopped payment after the first week or so, the printers were able to keep it going but a short time afterwards. And "thus the first cheap-for-cash daily in New- York perhaps in the world died when scarcely yet a month old ; and the printers were hard aground on a lee shore, with little prospect of getting off." But the seed was thus sown, after all, which subsequently grew and bore rich fruit. 1 1 It would appear from certain expressions in Mr. Greeley s "Recollec tions," that he at no time had confidence in the success of this venture, and for the reason that cheapness was about the only thing of the paper calculated to be popular. It is doubtless true, considering his inexperience and want of means, that Dr. Shepard s experiment was injudicious, rash. But he deserves credit for the idea and the pertinacity with which he adhered to it, until newspapers were actually sold on the streets every morning for a single penny apiece. Mr. Frederic Hudson, in his "History of Journalism" speaking of this experiment, says it "was the seed of the Cheap Press. It had taken root." In a few months, The Sun followed, and soon attained an immense circulation and made great profits. Mr. Greeley once said, " in that slouching Whig defeat of 1836 lay the germ of the overwhelming Whig triumph of 1840." Thus it was with the failure of The Morning Post. That failure was attributable, not to the impracticability of the idea, but to unfortunate circumstances. Dr. Shepard, therefore, may be fairly considered as entitled to the credit and renown of having been the originator of the Modern Cheap Press. HIS FIRST JOURNAL. 79 Messrs. Story & Greeley were saved from sudden bank ruptcy, as one of the natural consequences of the collapse of The Morning Post by the address of the senior partner. Mr. Story was well acquainted with a wealthy, eccentric Briton, named Schols, who had a taste for editorial life, and who was induced to buy the wreck of the paper, remove it to an office of his own, and employ Story as foreman. He soon tired of the bargain and threw it up; but meantime the embarass- ments of the firm had been overcome; the managers of the New- York lotteries had allowed a portion of their letter-press printing to follow Mr. Sylvester s into their concern; Mr. Greeley was frequently employed as a substitute in the com posing room of The Commercial Advertiser; jobs, sharply looked after, began to come in quite satisfactorily; and the young men were begining to make decided headway, when Mr. Story was drowned (July 9, 1833) while bathing in the East River, near his mother s residence in Brooklyn. Mr. Greeley deeply mourned the loss of his "nearest and dearest friend." A satisfactory arrangement was at once made with Mr. Story s mother, who received half the accounts due the firm, while another young printer, Mr. Jonas Win chester, who soon married Mr. Story s oldest sister, became Mr. Greeley s partner. The new firm went on with moderate but steady prosperity, satisfied with the work they received from others, and not making any journalistic venture of their own until the Spring of 1834. On the 22d day of March of that year The New- Yorker appeared, a weekly journal of large size, mainly devoted to current literature, but giving every week a carefully-edited summary of news, with, from time to time, full exhibits of election returns, and an impar tial digest of political intelligence. The New-Yorker was at first folio in form, but was afterwards changer! to a double quarto. This may be properly considered the first venture in jour nalism of Horace Greeley. He edited and made up the paper, Mr. Winchester having charge of the more profitable jobbing business of the firm. The journal appeared without having been previously advertised and with less than a score of sub- LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. scribers. Its prospectus, under the heading of "The Publish ers Address" was as follows: "There is one disadvantage attending our debut which is seldom encoun tered in the outset of periodicals aspiring to general popularity and patronage. Ours is not blazoned through the land as, The Cheapest Periodical in the World, The Largest Paper ever Published, or any of the captivating clap-traps wherewith enterprising gentlemen, possessed of a convenient stock of assurance, are wont to usher in their successive experiments on the gullibility of the Public. No likenesses of eminent :T.d favourite authors will embellish our title, while they disdain to write for our columns. No distinguished literary and fashionable characters have been dragged in to bolster up a rigmarole of preposterous and charlatan pretensions. And indeed so serious ia this deficiency, that the first (we may say the only) objection which has been started by our most judicious friends in the discussion of our plans and prospects, has invari ably been this: You do not indulge sufficiently in high-sounding pretensions. You cannot succeed without humbug. Our answer has constantly been: We shall try, and in the spirit of this determination, we respectfully solicit of our fellow-citizens the extension of that share of patronage which they shall deem warranted by our performances rather than our promises." Horace Greelcy wrote the editorials and made the selections for The New- Yorker for seven years and a half, -when it was discontinued. Its circulation steadily increased from the beginning until it reached nearly ten thousand. Mr. Parton says, "The New-Yorker was, incomparably, the best news paper of its kind that had ever been published in this country;" and Mr. Greeley said, more than a quarter of a century after its discontinuance : "I believe that just such a paper, issued to day, properly published and advertised, would obtain a circu lation of one hundred thousand iu less time than was required to give The New- Yorker scarcely a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money for its owners, instead of nearly starving them, as mine did." The paper was ably and very carefully edited, and was made up of literary matter, judi ciously selected from home and foreign publications; editorials; general news, with special excellency as to current political intelligence; literary, city, and miscellaneous paragraphs. It was entirely non-partizan in character, but the accuracy and fullness of its political news soon made it an authority in NOT A POET. 81 respect to recent and current political events, and particularly the exact results of elections in all the States of the Union. In addition to the writing done on The New- Yorker during the lirst year of its existence, Mr. Greeley freely contributed to the columns of a daily campaign penny paper, entitled The Constitution, which was printed by his firm, but the editor and publisher of which was Mr. A. R. Grain. The political canvass of that year, though "the off year" in general politics, was exceedingly animated in the city of New- York, and resulted, after the most exciting election of years, in a drawn battle, the Democrats electing their Mayor, Cornelius W. Lawrence defeating Gulian C. Verplanck by 384 majority, and the Whigs a majority of the Common Council. The Constitution did not pay, and Greeley and Winchester were among the losers, when it stopped. The rudimentary knowledge of the art of composition acquired by Horace Greeley during the latter part of his apprenticeship was gradually improved during his experience as a journeyman in various offices, and afterward as a printer of the experimental Morning Post, and other papers. For a considerable period he even aspired to be a poet, but most ingenuously confesses that his genius did not reach far in that direction. He says: "I had even written verses, never fluently nor happily, but tolerably well measured, and faintly evincing an admiration of Byron, Mrs. Hemans, and other popular writers, an admiration which I never mistook for inspiration or genius. While true poets are few, those who imagine themselves capable of becoming such are many; but I never advanced even to this grade. I knew that my power of expression in verse was defective, as though I had an impediment in my speech, or spoke with my mouth full of pebbles; and I very soon renounced the fetters of verse, con tent to utter my thoughts thenceforth in unmistakable prose. It is a comfort to know that not many survive who remember having read any of the few rhymed effusions of my incautious youth." It is so seldom, if not unique, for one to pronounce so just, though unfavourable, a judgment upon his own productions, and those productions in verse, that it ought 6 82 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. to be allowed to stand, forever undisturbed and faithfully respected. More than two years before the establishment of The New- Yorker, Dr. Sylvester Graham, a man of strong and acute mind, and unusually well informed in respect of the human anatomy, delivered a series of lectures in the city, advocating a new system of diet. He believed that health is the necessary result of obedience, disease, of disobedience to physical laws; that all stimulants, of whatsoever nature, are unwholesome, injurious; that spices and condiments are to be placed in the same category ; that better food than the flesh of animals can almost always be procured, and is far preferable. He also believed that food, otherwise good, might be made too con centrated to be wholesome; and he, therefore, advocated the use of unbolted flour in the making of all bread. The Doctor converted a considerable number to the adoption of " the Graham system, and Horace Greeley gave it his general assent, though he did not then, nor ever afterwards, wholly reject the use of meat, or tea " when black and very good." A boarding-house upon the Graham system was established, and hither Mr. Greeley betook himself with his baggage. Here he became acquainted with Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a teacher, a young lady of accomplishments and culture, and a radical " Grahamite." She afterwards removed to "Warrenton, North Carolina, whence the acquaintance with Mr. Greeley was continued by correspondence. In consequence whereof, The New-Yorker of July 16. 1836. at the head of its list of marriages, contained the following: > " In Immanuel church, Warrenton, North Carolina, on Tuesday morn ing, 5th inst., by Rev. William Norwood, Mr. HORACE GREELEY, editor of The New-Yorker, to Miss MART Y. CHENEY, of Warrenton, formerly of this city." The marriage was according to the Episcopal ceremony; and on this occasion, at any rate, Horace Greeley was dressed in a manner which would have satisfied the taste of the most fastidious gentleman. On returning with his bride to New- York, he stopped for a brief visit in Washington. He was LAST OF THE NEW-YORKER. 83 profoundly impressed with the Senate, thinking it unsurpassed in intellectual greatness by any body of fifty men ever con vened. He thought Mr. Clay was the most striking person on the floor, and Mr. Calhoun one of the plainest. Daniel Webster he did not see; but predicted great distinction for Mr. Crittenden. At the time of his marriage, Mr. Greeley considered himself worth five thousand dollars, and the master of a business which, with his labour, would yield him at least one thousand dollars annually, a sum sufficient for the respectable support of a small family in those days. About this time he dissolved partnership with Mr. Winchester, who took the job depart ment of the establishment, he. The New-Yorker office. His anticipations of income proved to be sadly at fault. The financial crash of 1837 brought him to the verge of ruin and involved him deeply in debt. Throughout the year he found himself compelled to confront a net loss of about one hundred dollars per week. He constantly and vigourously appealed to his delinquent subscribers, but all in vain. As a rule, they were as badly broken as he was. And so, oppressed by debt, lie struggled on, hoping against hope, and fighting bravely to the last, until after he had founded that great daily journal by which his name shall be lastingly perpetuated, and, no doubt, his beneficent influence continued evermore. The final discontinuance of The New-Yorker is thus described by himself: "When I at length stopped The New-Yorker (September 20, 1841), though poor enough, I provided for making good all I owed to its subscribers who had paid in advance, and shut up its books whereon were inscribed some $10,000 owed me in sums of $1 to $10 each, by men to whose service I had faithfully devoted the best years of my life, years that, though full of labour and frugal care, might have been happy had they not been made wretched bj- those men s dishonesty. They took my journal, and probably read it; they promised to pay for it, and defaulted; leaving me to pay my paper-maker, type-founder, journeymen, etc., as I could. My only requital was a sorely achieved but wholesome lesson. I had been thoroughly burned out, only saving my books, in the great Ann Street fire (August 12, 1835); I was burned out again in February, 1845; and, while the destruction was complete, and the insurance but partial, I had the poor consolation, that the account-books of The New-Yorker 84: LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. which I had never opened since I first laid them away, but which had been an eye-sore and a reminder of evil days whenever I stumbled upon them were at length dissolved in smoke and flame, and lost to sight for ever." 2 Meanwhile, before The iSTew- Yorker stopped, events of vast importance had transpired in the State and Nation, with the bringing about of which Horace Greeley had had much to do. It is fit, therefore, that we should now glance at the political history of this period, that we may justly estimate his influence upon his cotemporaries, and correctly note the impress of his mind upon his times. 4 "Recollections, p. 97. CHAPTEB VI. CHIEFLY OF THE "LOG-CABIN" CAMPAIGN. The Presidential Election of 1836 " Old Hickory " Greeley s Opinion of Martin Van Buren Thurlow Weed Calls on Mr. Greeley The Latter Induced to Take Charge of a "Campaign" Paper at Albany The Jeffersonian A Model Political "Organ" The Graves and Cilley Duel Success to the Whigs in New York State William H. Seward Elected Governor The Remarkable Presidential Campaign of 1840 The Harrisburgh Convention Nomination of General Harrison "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" Log-Cabins and Hard Cider Mr. Greeley Edits The Log-Cabin Newspaper Its Character Prodigious Success The Nation Aroused Notices of Some of The Most Noted Orators Triumph The Death of President Harrison Mr. Greeley Determines to Establish a Daily Journal in New- York. THE second election of Andrew Jackson was followed by "good times" throughout the country. The National Banks had been overturned. The Federal revenue was deposited in State banks ("the Pet Banks," as they were called by the Whigs), which had thereby been enabled to make a great expansion of issues and loans, flooding the country with cur rency. Prices were high; speculation was rife; money, such as it was, abounded plentifully; there was great demand for labour; there was, in fine, a tidal wave of universal prosperity sweeping over the country. And for all this, "Old Hickory," as President Jackson was generally called, was given the credit. He became the autocrat of the dominating party ; dictating its policy, nominating its candidates, and bearing them on to success by the strength of his mighty name. There never has been an American President so preposterously praised and so cruelly abused as Andrew Jackson. He was illiterate, un- genteelly profane, a swaggerer, a bully, a duellist, and a bigamist. Such were among the mildest descriptions by his opponents. Decency could not endure the pictures of him as painted by the pot-house politicians of the opposition. On (85) 86 LIFE OF HORACE GKEFXEY. the other hand, he was represented by }iis friends as the second father and saviour of his country. ~No praise of him could be too highly drawn ; no eulogium too extravagant. In truth, he was a man of great good sense, of wonderfully correct intui tions as to the wishes of the people, of magnificent pluck, and of invincible will. He was a first-rate hater of his enemies, and a most chivalrously devoted friend. Circumstances of a peculiar nature had made President Jackson not only the friend but the patron of Martin Yan Buren. The President willed that Yan Buren should be his successor; and he was. Mr. Yan Buren was not the nominee of the Democratic party, but of Andrew Jackson, and as such was undoubtedly stronger than if he had been nominated by an untrammelled national convention. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was nominated for Yice-President. The Whigs, without any caucus or convention, ran General Harrison for President and Francis Granger for Yice-President. An inde pendent ticket, consisting of Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, and John Tyler, of Yirginia, contested the South with the regulars of the Jackson party. The result developed unex pected strength on the part of the Whigs, who carried Yermont, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, losing Pennsylvania by a very small majority, while two Southern States voted for White, and, in addition, Yirginia refused to vote for Johnson, so that he had to be chosen Yice- President by the Senate. Mr. Greeley had ardently supported the candidacy of General Harrison, but was therein seconded by very few politicians in the East. The result vindicated his judgment, and demon strated the fact that Harrison either was more popular or Yan Buren more obnoxious than had been commonly supposed. 1 The election of Van Buren was extremely distasteful to Mr. Greeley, who seems to have had anything but an exalted opinion of " the Sage of Kinderhook." He says, in his "Recollections of a Busy Life:" " Mr. Van Buren s election to the Presidency always seemed to me anomalous, and I am not yet fully reconciled to it. He had none of that personal magnetism which made General Jackson and Mr. Clay respect ively the idols of their contending parties. He was not even an orator, was far inferior to Silas Wright as a debater, and to William L. Marcy in MR. THURLOW WEED. 87 The Whigs drew great encouragement for the future from the result, and those of New York especially set themselves imme diately to work with a confidence of success which had not before been felt in anti-Jackson circles. The financial revulsion which speedily followed the inauga- ration of President Van Buren, making 1837 the "black year" in American business annals, was the precursor of a political revolution without parallel in the history of politics in the United States. The elections of the year all showed an aston ishing change of party affiliations. In New York, the President s own State, he hardly had any one left to say " God bless him." The Whigs for the first time carried the city of New- York. Out of 128 members of assembly, they carried no less than one hundred. The Senate, only one-fourth of which was chosen annually, remained, of course, strongly Democratic. The next year a Governor would have to be chosen ; the Legis lature would by law be required to elect a United States Senator; Representatives in Congress would also be elected. It was a vital matter that the campaign of the year should be conducted with judgment and vigour " all along the lines." Mr. Thurlow Weed, at this time the editor of The Albany Evening Journal, was the Warwick of New York politics; or, rather, it should be said, of the Whig party in that common wealth. We have never had in America, perhaps, a private citizen who exercised so much influence in partisan affairs as this gentleman; and there have been but few men in the re public, no matter how exalted in official position, who have in reality wielded greater political power than he. He has dic tated platforms and nominated candidates. He has controlled the policy of our greatest State, and at important crises marked out the polity of the national government. Almost executive ability. I believe his strength lay in his suavity. He was the reconciler of the estranged, the harmonizer of those -who were at feud, among his fellow-partizans. An adroit and subtle, rather than a great man, I judge that he owed his election, first to the Vice-Presidency, then to the Presidency, to the personal favour and imperious will of Andrew Jackson, with whom Love me, love my dog, 1 was an iron rule. Had there been no Jackson, Van Buren would never have attained the highest office in the gift of his countrymen." S8 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. single-handed, he has repelled the combined assaults of a ma jority of the representative men of his party upon his friends, securing them a tenure of office no less firm than that of the law itself. In the management of caucuses, in the manipu lation of legislative bodies, in the control of conventions, he for many years exhibited a skill and power never approached by any other citizen. The faculty which enables one to make seemingly hostile elements coalesce and move together for the accomplishment of a common object, he possessed as no American, surely, has ever possessed it. Himself uncorrupted, he was the master of all means of corruption; poor, he was always able to command vasts sums of money. Fascinating in manners, brilliant in conversation, an accomplished flatterer, his apartments were constantly visited by troops of friends who were too willing to take his judgment as law, and to exe cute his plans. And yet he was generally adroit enough to make men believe that his suggestions were theirs, and that he was gratefully drinking in wisdom from their perennial foun-, tains. In this seductive and powerful species of flattery Mr. Weed has not been equalled, perhaps, by any American states man; not even by Thomas Jefferson or William H. Seward. Among his many excellent qualities there was none more pleasing and admirable than that which prompted and enabled him to win the confidence and friendship of young men ; un less it were that other quality which caused him, during a period longer than the average lifetime of an active politician, to subdue his own political aspirations and more than gener ously, sublimely, devote all his talents and labours to gratifying the ambition of a friend. Such was the man who, in 1838, brought Horace Greeley "to the front "of influential politicians in Kew York. Up to this time, these gentlemen had never met; but Mr. Weed had been a constant reader of The Kew- Yorker, and had con ceived a great liking for its editor, and a just appreciation of his talents. In view of the vast importance of carrying the State in the election of this year, it was determined that a campaign paper should be published at Albany, the capital. And without ever having seen him, Thurlow Weed made up TI1E JEFYERSONIAN. 89 his mind that Horace Greeley was of all others the man to take charge of the paper. Because of his little acquaintance with the public men of the state outside of the city, he had never even attended a state convention, Mr. Greeley was no little surprised to receive a call, one morning, a few days after the political victory of 1837, from Mr. Weed, who desired an interview at his apartments, City Hotel. Thither the new acquaintances proceeded together, and there met Mr. Lewis Benedict, also of Albany, and the three talked over the pro posed campaign paper. The upshot of the matter was, Mr. Greeley agreed to take editorial charge of it, receiving for his services one thousand dollars. The journal was to be called The Jeffersonian ; was to be a small octavo, issued weekly for a year; and virtually to be given away at the nominal price of fifty cents a year, the expenses of the publication to be made up by voluntary contributions of public-spirited Whigs. The acceptance of this position by Mr. Greeley required him to be in Albany during much of the Winter, and half the time in Summer. About two months after the interview with Mr. Weed and Mr. Benedict, having arranged his affairs in New- York as well as possible, Mr. Greeley took passage for the capital, and had a cold sleigh-ride thither, arriving at Albany in the afternoon of the third day s journeying. The first number of The Jeffersonian soon thereafter appeared, and continued to be published regularly according to agreement. It was a model political " organ." It scrupulously and con stantly avoided abuse, scurrility, and railing accusations. Its contents were for the most part made up of speeches upon current issues which had been made in Congress, opposition to the Independent or Sub-Treasury scheme being the topic to which tne most space was given; and with great good judg ment, because it was the question in which there was the most popular interest at the time. The editorials were few, and those few almost always brief, never bitter, seldom partisan in spirit. In fine, The Jeffersonian sought to win adherents to the Whig cause, by calm argumentation, candour, and modera- 90 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. tiou. It illustrated the wise and venerable adage, that flies may be caught with honey, never with vinegar. 2 The circulation of The Jeffersonian was some fifteen thou sand copies each week. It undoubtedly exercised a very considerable influence among the people. Its articles, moder ate in spirit, convincing in statement, were extensively copied by Whig journals in all parts of the State, so that whether the paper itself did so or not, its influence reached to every section of the commonwealth. Though the Whigs this year lost Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, which they had previously carried, they were successful in New York, and that too not withstanding the election there occurred after the discouraging results in the states named had become known. For this. * Perhaps the longest article by Horace Greeley which appeared in The Jeffersonian, was his account of the well-known Graves-Cilley duel near Washington, in February, 1838. After a careful and full relation of all the facts in the sad affair, the article concludes : "But enough of detail and circumstance. The reader who has not seen the official statement will find its substance in the foregoing. He can lay the blame where he chooses. We blame only the accursed spirit of False Honour which required this bloody sacrifice the horrid custom of Duelling which exacts and palliates this atrocity. It appears evident that Mr. Cilley s course must have been based on the determination that Col. Webb was not entitled to be regarded as a gentleman ; and if so, there was hardly an escape from a bloody conclusion after Mr. Graves had once consented, however uncon sciously, to bear the note of Col. Webb. Each of the parties, doubtless, acted as he considered due to his own character ; each was right in the view of the duelist s code of honour, but fearfully wrong in the eye of reason, of morality, of humanity, and the im perative laws of man and of God. Of the principals, one sleeps cold and stiff beneath the icy pall of winter and the clods of the valley; the other far more to be pitied lives to execrate through years of anguish and remorse the hour when he was impelled to imbrue his hands in the blood of a fellow-being. " Mr. Graves we know personally, and a milder and more amiable gentleman is rarely to be met with. He has for the last two years been a Representative from the Louisville District, Kentucky, and is universally esteemed and beloved. Mr. Cilley was a youngman of one of the best families in New Hampshire; his grandfather was a Colonel and after wards a General of the Revolution. His brother was a Captain in the last War with Great Britain, and leader of the desperate bayonet charge at Bridgewater. Mr. Cilley himself, though quite a young man, has been for two years Speaker of the House of Representatives of Maine, and was last year elected to Congress from the Lincoln Dis trict, which is decidedly opposed to him in politics, and which recently gave 1,200 majority for the other side. Young as he was, he had acquired a wide popularity and influence in his own State, and was laying the foundations of a brilliant career in the National Councils. And this man, with so many ties to bind him to life, with the sky of his future bright with hope, without an enemy on earth, and with a wife and three children of tender age whom his death must drive to the verge of madness has perished miserably in a combat forbidden by God, growing out of a difference so pitiful in itself, ao direful in its consequences. "Could we add anything to render the moral more terribly impressive?" THE HARD TIMES OF 1837. 91 triumph much was due to Horace Greeley s liberal and efficient editorial conduct of The Jeffersonian. Henceforth he was recognized as potential in the politics of the state. It was at this election that William H. Seward was chosen Governor of New York, defeating the distinguished William L. Marcy by more than 10,000 majority. The Whigs also elected a large majority of the Assembly, but the Senate still remained under the control of the Democrats, and was not taken therefrom until the following year. In addition to conducting The New- Yorker and The Jeft er- sonian, Mr. Greeley, during the sessions of the Legislature, made condensed reports of the Assembly debates for The Evening Journal, and also contributed several editorials to that paper. And thus, Mr. Weed being chief political manager, Mr. Seward having become Governor, Mr. Greeley being always reliable for good advice, vigorous articles, and efficient work, was gradually formed during the year 1838 and the early part of the following year the famous political partner ship of ; Seward, Weed, and Greeley," which was not dissolved till after the Whig party itself had passed away. The political campaign of 1840, in which Horace Greeley bore a more conspicuous part, perhaps, than any other private citizen, and brought to bear as much influence on the election as any other one man, in or out of office, was one of the most remarkable contests in all the annals of politics. The party which had elected General Jackson to the Presidency, had by this time taken the name of the Democracy. Jackson had been President eight years, and, as we have seen, had dictated his successor in the person of Martin Van Buren. The period of Mr. Van Buren s administration had been characterized by a tremendous commercial revulsion, under the terrible force of which the trade, and commerce, and prosperity of the country had been paralyzed. Banks, merchants, traders, farmers in countless numbers were ruined. Labour went begging, and received few alms in reply to its earnest supplications. All this deplorable state of things was attributed to Mr. Van Buren and the Democratic party; and the President, without blame, as we may now clearly see, for the melancholy situation 92 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. in which the country found itself, soon discovered that he was to be held responsible for the ills by which the republic was afflicted. He doubtless fully appreciated the difficulty of maintaining his position, and was fully aware of the great extent of his unpopularity. With a tine dignity, he appealed for support to "the sober second thought" of the people; but that sober second thought did not come in time to save him from overwhelming defeat. It is difficult, at this day, to conceive of the extent and in tensity of the popular feeling against Mr. Van Buren s administration, as manifested first in 1837, and again in 1840. In 1838, the elections generally were favourable to the adminis tration; but the wave of unpopularity soon again returned, and dashed it to pieces in the elections of 1840. Not antici pating any such result, the Democrats nominated Mr. Van Buren as a candidate for re-election, at a convention held in Baltimore. Vice-president Richard M. Johnson was also again placed on the ticket. The Whigs, meantime, had held their first National Conven tion in the city of Harrisburgh, Pennsylvania. The convention remained in session several days. A plurality were in favour of the nomination of Henry Clay, but a majority of these were from States which would surely vote against him at the election. Delegates from the large " doubtful States " of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, declared they could carry their States for General Harrison but not for Mr. Clay. After a long struggle, General Harrison was nominated, Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed, who were present, doing all in their power to bring about "that result. John Tyler, of Vir ginia, was nominated candidate for the Vice-Presidency. He had warmly supported Mr. Clay, and upon his defeat is said actually to have wept. However this may be, his nomination was an attempt on the part of the victorious Harrison men to soften the grief of Clay s devoted friends. It would appear that there was something in General Har rison s history and character which took hold of the popular heart, gaining its affections in a wonderful manner. His nomination had hardly been made, when the delegates felt that WILLIAM H. SEWARD. THUBLOW WKtD. "TIPPECANOE." 93 success was certain. Means of travel were not then what they are now. In every town and village through which the re turning delegates passed, travelling by coach or carriage, they were met by crowds of men and congratulated upon the result of their labours. When they reached their homes they felt as though the battle were already won. If it is not easy to account for the unpopularity of Van Buren, the popularity of Harrison furnishes a problem equally perplexing, unless carefully studied. It is certain that General Harrison was one of the plainest of men, and was not pos sessed of any great or shining talents. He was not an orator. In a public assemblage or in a deliberative body he was not to be compared with his defeated competitor at Harrisburgh, or with his defeated competitor at the election. But the people are generally wiser than their rulers. Perhaps the great pop ularity of William Henry Harrison lay in the fact that he was one of the people. He had exhibited courage, all good sol dierly qualities. He had manifested a capacity for the conduct of public affairs. But he was modest, retiring, apparently satisfied with the vocation of a farmer. On the other hand, there was a feeling, widely spread over the country, that Presi dent Yan Buren was an aristocrat; that he lived in grand and lofty style; that he ate his soup with a golden spoon; that the people were taxed to pay for this and other extravagant living. The opinion was general that the country was in danger of coming under the control of a " ruling class," whose power lay, not in talents, nor in services for the body politic at large, but in intrigue. They declined to make the fox a representative of their nationality. However we may account for it, it is certain that Harrison s popularity was prodigious at the start, the people sponta neously sustained him, and gained with every succeeding day, from his nomination to his election. It was increased rather than diminished by the nature of the assaults made upon him by orators and journals of the Democratic party. They ridi culed his military career, charging him with both imbecility and cowardice. They averred that he was an old dotard; a granny, who ought to wear a red flannel petticoat. Finally 94 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. an injudicious editor capped the climax of the universal par tisan vituperation by saying: "Give him a log-cabin and a barrel of hard cider, and he will be content on his farm in Ohio, whose affairs only is he capable of managing." Never was unfortunate sentence so big in results. The taunt was taken up by the Whig journals and made use of as an argu ment to show that we did have a pretentious "ruling class," who had become pampered with the long possession of political power, and looked down with sneering contempt upon the toiling millions. Not only so, but log-cabins and hard cider became prominent adjuncts in the campaign. Countless log- cabins were raised at public meetings, and barrels of hard cider drank beyond all powers of computation. Besides this opinion of the people, and it was substantially correct, that there was an attempt to foist upon them a ruling class, there were other causes of the political excitement, of the popular fine frenzy. We have seen how effective was The Jeifersonian campaign paper of 1838 under Mr. Greeley s con trol. In 1840, he established and conducted a paper which was for the whole republic what The Jeffersonian had been for the State of New York. This journal was, indeed, suggested or, rather, a campaign journal was suggested in a council of leading New York Whigs, consisting of Governor Seward, Thurlow Weed, and others, and Mr. Greeley was named as editor; but the enterprise, though thus endorsed and aided by favourable opinion, was his own. No contributions were asked or obtained. Mr. Greeley became both editor and publisher. A new partner whom he had secured about this time, frightened at the cheapness -of the campaign paper, withdrew from the firm, so that Mr. Greeley was left to edit and publish both that and The New-Yorker, a double labour which he performed without complaint not only, but with a cheerfulness whose rays of jolly fun penetrated every part of the Union. The name of the new journal was The Log-Cabin. It was a large sized folio, and the terms to subscribers were : $5 for fif teen copies for the period of six months, being from May 1 to November 1. The publication of the first number was greeted with a rush of subscribers never before heard of. Of this "THE LOG-CABIN." 95 number 30,000 copies were printed, but they failed to supply the demand. The forms were again put on the press and 10,000 additional copies printed. These were rapidly ex hausted, and there was still demand for more, but, the types having been distributed, it could not be supplied. The issues rapidly ran up to 80,000 copies, where they were perforce stopped, the limit of the concern s printing and publishing capacity being reached. Mr. Greeley long afterwards expressed the opinion that with the machinery of distribution by news companies, expresses, etc., subsequently brought in vogue, the issues of single numbers of The Log-Cabin might have reached a quarter of a million copies. When The Log-Cabin first appeared, the political fervour of the times had begun to boil. And there never was finer fuel to keep political fervour boiling lively than The Log-Cabin. It was very different indeed from The Jeffersonian, being not only argumentative and courteous, but also lively, piquant, jollv, satirical. Here was no long-faced Puritan going to meetiner, but a Puritan at home with his week-day clothes on, cV * in a rollicking mood, and tolerably full of Londonderry hard cider. The prevailing excitement was caught up: fully repre sented by wood-cuts, in song (music accompanying), and in every way, then heard of: and to some extent intensified by each succeeding number of the paper. There are thousands of men now living in America, boys in 1840, who remember how eagerly The Log-Cabin was looked for during that ever memorable campaign, and how, upon its arrival, it was read by every member of the family old enough to read, and by many of the neighbours. It is safe to say that The Log-Cabin, what with old folks and young, had at least a million readers, and countless babies to be amused by " the pictures." The political songs of the period did much also to keep alive the excitement. Indeed, it has been said by a popular writer, Mr. Parton that General Harrison was sung into the Pres idential chair. If so much power cannot be justly attributed to the songs of the times, it is certain that they formed a very important element in the canvass. There was a Harrison glee- 96 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. club in every neighbourhood; several in every town; many in every city. And it is a singular fact, that by early abuse of this glee-club line of political operations, the Democratic party was estopped from taking advantage of it. Toward the close of the campaign, the leaders saw that they had made a mistake, and undertook to rectify it by getting up what they called glee- clubs of their own. But, as Mr. Greeley might have said, it was no go. It was not the campaign for Democratic glee- clubs, or any sort of glee. The fun all came in on the other side from the start, and stayed there to the end. The lively music naturally belonged, during that remarkable year, to the Whigs, and they monopolized it. This was thunder which their opponents could not steal. Many of the campaign songs originally appeared in The Log-Cabin. Not a few of them were no less comic in music than in words. The song-making and song-singing genius of the nation seemed to be all aroused for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." There were even political troubadours in those days; and many will recollect having been treated more than once, by some travelling singer on a stage-coach, while the horses were changing, to a number of " Tippecanoe " airs. The most uni versally sung of all the ballads of the time, perhaps, was the one beginning with the stanza: " What has caused this great commotion-motion-motion Our country through ? It is the ball a-rolling on For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too ; And with them we ll beat little Van ; Van, Van, Van is a used-up man, And with them we ll beat little Van." The original number of stanzas to this song was not very great, but they grew with the campaign, each event of im portance being duly chronicled in a new stanza or two, usually published in The Log-Cabin and thus sent all over the country. For example, the result of the Whig triumph at the gubernatorial election in Maine, was done up, in no very sacred lines, as follows: THOMAS OOIfVVIN. 97 " O, have you heard how Maine went, went, went ? It went h 1 bent For Governor Kent, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, For Tippecanoe anil Tyler too ; And with them we can beat any man, Man, man, man of the Van Buren clan; And with them we ll beat little Van." If there were a Democratic hickory-pole raising, and the pole broke; if there were a Democratic mass-meeting announced, and the masses failed to come, as they often did ; if there were any disaster to the Democracy; or if there were any good fortune to the Whigs, it would not be midnight till the glee-clubs would have it, and away they would go seranading, " For Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Hundreds of these politi cal songs first appeared in Mr. Greeley s campaign paper. How many he himself wrote can never be known, perhaps, but he no doubt wrote a good many. There is no kind ot composition more easy, and as it was now singularly effective it may be regarded as certain that he took all due ad vantage of it. But whatever may be the fact herein, it is certain that through The Log-Cabin he supplied the omnipresent glee-clubs with a large share of their songs, music inclusive. And so the political cauldron kept on boiling, and getting hotter and hotter all the time. It was not only a canvass of remarkable campaign papers, and popular enthusiasm, and no end of songs, but also one which must be long noteworthy on account of its eloquence. In General Harrison s own state, the Whig candidate for Governor was Thomas Corwin, "the wagon-boy of Ohio," as thousands of ribbon badges, with wood-cuts of his jolly face printed thereon, amply testified. Mr. Corwin was, perhaps, the most eloquent orator we have ever had in the United States, unless it may be thought that Sargent S. Prentiss may have equalled him in power before a public assembly. Mr. Corwin was master of every kind of oratory, and whether he was argu mentative, grave, humourous, or what not, he held his audiences as if by enchantment, and never failed to convince many of the correctness of his views. Though he had not received the 98 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. advantages of an early education, lie had when the campaign of 1840 came on, stored his mind by extensive reading, which his wonderful memory retained with singular power and accuracy. He had reflected much, and had become a man both of culture and of wisdom. Nature, it would appear, had made him an orator. No actor ever had, after long years of study, a more wonderful versatility of expression of face. Mr. Corwin, at one instant, could look as solemn as the grave, the next as jolly as Mr. Burton ever appeared. His coimtenance would some times fairly flash with indignation, as he spoke of a perpetrated or contemplated wrong, and might in a few moments be expressive of gentleness and all humane goodness, in an appeal in behalf of the wronged. No man could state an argument more clearly and forcibly than he; no man more effectively appeal to the better natures and nobler instincts of his kind. There have been few of our public men to surpass him in in tellectual power; not one who ever approached the sublime moral and political courage of his speech against the Mexican war; not one who was his equal in the power both to entertain and persuade great numbers of men. The secret of his sur passing power was in his great human kindness. No more generous heart ever beat than his. He spoke, night and day, during most of the campaign. Many an Ohioan will recollect his: "And now, my friends, I will tell you a story out of Horace Greeley s Log-Cabin ; " or his: " Now rnv Democratic t/ O t/ friends, if you do not believe me, you will flnd it all in Horace Greeley s Log-Cabin, which, I take it, is good enough political Bible for anybody, and especially for those so much in need of salvation!" Mr. Corwin was greatly aided in his campaign by the Hon. John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky. They were excellent stump- speaking companions, Mr. Crittenden at that time being ever dignified, almost severe in manner, though strong in argument and often splendid in appeal, while "the wagon -boy" never failed to arnuse. as well as instruct. Thomas Ewing, also, afterwards Secretary of the Interior, made many a good speech during the campaign, and most felicitously responded to many a seranade, composed of songs taken from The Log-Cabin. LOG-CABIN BARBECUES. 99 William Bebb, afterwards Governor of the State, Robert C. Schenck. Lewis D. Campbell, Charles Anderson, and others who have since attained celebrity, spoke nearly as often if not as effectively as Corwin himself. The prevailing enthusiasm and The Log-Cabin stirred up Indiana, too, where Henry S. Lane, especially, then a young lawyer recently from Kentucky, and Joseph Marshall, " the sleeping lion of Hoosierdom," gained no little celebrity as ora tors. The State was carried by the Whigs at the August election, whereby Tilman A. Howard, one of the greatest and purest men Indiana ever produced, was defeated for Governor. Perhaps the greatest public meetings were held in the West, as was proper, General Harrison being a Western man. But they w T ere held in all parts of the country, and many orators, since greatly distinguished in public life, then had larger audi ences than most of them have ever had since. Governor Seward was active in New r York, of course; and was ably sus tained by Millard Fillmore, Francis Granger, General Erastus Root, Lewis C. Levin, and others. The eloquent S. S. Prentiss, John Bell. Tyler, the scholarly Legaire, "rolled on the ball" in the South, and everywhere it gained strength like an avalanche. There never were in America so many and so great political gatherings as in the Log-Cabin campaign. With the exception of South Carolina and a few other Southern States, immense meetings of the people took place in every State. They were often called barbecues, from the fact that animals were cooked whole and served out, when duly carved, to the people gratui tously. These " free barbecues " were regular institutions, so to speak, of the times. It took a whole day and night to get through with a first-class barbecue. About ten o clock in the morning, the people would begin to come in from the country, in wagons and carriages, and on horseback. They would be formed into procession, in the line of which would be from one to a dozen genuine log-cabins mounted on wheels, drawn by from four to twenty horses, and each cabin containing a barrel of hard cider. Glee-clubs were well interspersed, in band-wagons, through the procession; and the very stones of 100 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. the streets might hear that they sang " Tippecanoe and Tyler too." After the procession, came the free dinner; then the speeches. At night there were torch-light processions and turpentine-balls, interspersed with short addresses. All parts of the programme were well spiced with glee-club and hard cider condiments; and in all these immense meetings in all parts of the Union, but particularly in the Middle and Western States, any one could see the opinion was quite general, that "Horace Greeley s Log-Cabin was good enough political Bible for any body." Many journals bore an influential part in this stirring cam paign. The New- York Express, then as now (1873) edited by James and Erastus Brooks, was "decidedly Whig." Mr. Thurlow Weed s Albany Evening Journal was never more vigourously conducted. Mr. George D. Prentice, of The Louisville Journal, had it been possible, would have outshone himself; and certainly he laboured only less energetically and efficiently, and sparkled only less brilliantly than during the next great campaign when his idolized " Harry of the West " headed the national ticket. The Cincinnati Gazette and the State Journal, of Columbus, Ohio, were exceedingly potential in General Harrison s own State. Everywhere the newspapers of the Whig party, both small and great, sympathized with the universal enthusiasm and gallantly fought for the cause. But not one, not even several combined, had the general circulation and consequent influence of Horace Greeley s Log- Cabin. It was the campaign paper of the campaign. It need scarcely be added, therefore, that when the campaign closed in unprecedented and magnificent triumph, Horace Greeley was about as widely known throughout the republic as any of her citizens. I have deemed it just thus somewhat fully to describe the notable campaign of 1840, because I believe it to be true that Horace Greeley s influence in that campaign was greater than that of any other one person. It may be said, admitting this to be true, it may only show a remarkably fortunate newspaper " hit," without manifesting unusual prescience or political wisdom. If there be those who choose so to think, PRESIDENT HARRISON S DEATH. 101 so be it. But they will please to remember that, almost in a minority of one in the East, he favoured the nomination of General Harrison in 1836; and that his unexpected successes of this year prefigured the triumph of four years later. They will also please to remember that a great share of the enthu siasm of the Log-cabin campaign grew out of the history and character of General Harrison. And, further, that no man, confessedly, did so much to fan that enthusiasm into a fine flame of fervour spreading all over the land as the unpretend ing, modest Editor of The Log-Cabin. One must needs treat to some extent of historical events, when writing the life of a man who did so much to create historical events as Horace Gi-eeley. The joy of the people at the Whig success was very great, and by no means confined to members of the Whig party. It was also manifested no less clearly upon General Harrison s inauguration, March 4, 1841. The gloom which settled down upon the majority at his untimely and sudden death, only one month afterwards, it at once transpiring that President Tyler would depart from the cherished policy of the Whigs, was most sadly depressing upon them, and not without visible ill effects upon the country at large. Mr. Greeley still continued to edit and publish both The New-Yorker and The Lug-Cabin, but before the death of President Harrison had determined to undertake that great enterprise, whose remarkable success placed him at the head of the most influential profession, and made his name more, and more favourably, known in Christendom than that of any American citizen not in exalted official position. CHAPTEK VII. FOUNDER OF THE NEW -YORK TRIBUNE. Resume of Public Journalism up to the Time of the New- York Tribune The Partisan Press "Organs" Noted Party Editors: Isaac Hill, Thomas Ritchie, Edwin Croswell, Duff Green, Andrew Jackson, Amos Kendall, Francis P. Blair, John C. Rives; "The Kitchen Cabinet " The National Intelligencer Gales and Seaton Charles Hammond ; George D. Prentice New- York Journalism Goes to the Front The Six -Penny Journals William C. Bryant, James Watson Webb, and Other Journalists of the Old Regime The Cheap Press The New- York Sun The Herald and James Gordon Bennett The Herald Originally a Journal Without Principle A Newspaper Vacuum Thereby Caused Horace Greeley Establishes The Tribune, Price One Cent Its Early History Mr. Thomas McElrath Character of The Tribune Devoted to the Welfare of the People Welcomes All New Ideas Success. A HISTORY of journalism in the United States is a desideratum in American literature. In the cause of human progress, of the spread of liberal, just principles of government, there is no single means of influence, perhaps, which has been so powerful as the free press of the American republic. This vast influence has been exercised in a two-fold manner: First, by successful attacks upon political and social ills, venerable, it may be, with years, firmly established by custom and preju dice, but prolific ever of misery and iniquity. Secondly, by the advocacy of new ideas, whose practical establishment lias conferred great blessings upon mankind, and is likely to confer many more, as a logical result of reforms already inaugurated. Before the assaults of our free press many vicious institutions have fallen in ruins too long delayed; and at its magical touch have sprung up in their stead beautiful and beneficent systems. It has become itself a great institution, and, upon the whole thus far in its history, a benignant one. We speak of a college (102) POLITICAL " HAND-OKGANS." 103 or a university as an institution. But a college or a university can confer its course of education upon but a few hundreds at most annually. The press has become the educator of the whole people, the presidents and professors of colleges, in many things, and the masses generally. Its pupils are all the citizens of the republic, and not a few subjects of foreign nations. The rise, progress, and great development, of late years, especially, of an institution of such vast and varied influences, is a topic for historical research and philosophical disquisition of great and permanent interest. It cannot be long till such a work as that of which I speak, shall be forthcoming. Meantime, let us hastily review so much of the history of modern journalism as will enable us to correctly estimate the work done therein by Horace Greeley. 1 Up to a short period before the founding of the daily paper with which Mr. Greeley s name will be permanently connected, nearly all American journals were party " organs." This was a misnomer, or, rather, only a half name. They should have been called " hand-organs," for the palpable reason that hand- organs can only grind out those particular tunes which the machines are manufactured to play, whereas the organ, in the hands of a fine performer, has illimitable musical capacity. So the party " organ " was confined to a narrow sphere, with in which discussion became wonderfully acrimonious at times and exceedingly profitless. Nevertheless, there were many surpassingly acute and brilliant minds engaged upon the partizan press of America contemporaneously with Horace Greeley s first essays in editor ial composition. There was Isaac Hill, editor of The New Hampshire Patriot, of general circulation and large influence throughout New England. Mr. Hill was a man of great polit- 1 While this volume is being prepared, "Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872," by Mr. Frederic Hudson has appeared, a large volume, containing immense store of curious, useful, interesting facts. A more valuable or more readable volume has not recently been published. I find myself compelled to disagree with some of Mr. Hudson s opinions, but gladly acknowledge many and great obligations to his work, which ought to be very generally read, and soon revised. 104 IJFE OF HORACE GREELEY. ical sagacity, pluck, and persistency. He is said to have been instigator of President Jackson s war on the United States O Bank, which resulted in the destruction of that once powerful institution. Thomas Ritchie had long edited The Richmond Enquirer on the platform of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 99. His journal came to have considerable circulation and undoubted influence in all portions of the South. Ritchie was a strong writer, but not quite servile enough to be always in good odour at political headquarters. "It is true," said President Jackson, " Mr. Ritchie is an experienced editor, but sometimes goes oif at half-cock before he sees the whole ground, and does the party great injury before he sees his error, and then has great difficulty to get back into the right track again. Witness his course on my removal of the deposits," etc. Just as if it \vere not possible for a President to " go off at half- cock before he sees the whole ground." Edwin Croswell and u the Albany Regency" had made The Albany Argus of great influence in ^ew York, to be overturned at last only by the powerful political partnership of " Seward. Weed. & Greeley." There were not a few party organs in the South and West, sustaining the ruling powers, conducted by men of great experience and ability. But up to 1840, when The Log-Cabin by Horace Greeley attained a national circulation and influence, the party organs of the Federal Capital were the most widely known. Mr. Duff Green for many years conducted The Telegraph at Washington, and with great spirit and power. But President Jackson suspected Green s fidelity to "the party," and The Washing ton Globe was established. It was edited by Andrew Jackson, Francis P. Blair, John C. Rives, and Amos Kendall, the last three of whom were known all over the country as " the Kitchen Cabinet." It was a very powerful editorial coalition. Jackson could not write a sentence in respectable English, but he could dictate articles of great vigour and political wisdom. He dictated and Kendall wrote. Mr. Blair was a sagacious politician and a strong writer. Mr. Rives was a man of gigantic stature, imperturbable good nature, and fine mind. We have, perhaps, never had a finer editorial diplomat. Mr. CHAKLES HAMMOND AND GEORGE D. PRENTICE. 105 Kendall also contributed able articles of his own to The Globe. It spoke, therefore, as one having authority, and reached every portion of the country. The party organ of greatest influence among the Whigs, up to the time of The Log-Cabin, was The iSTational Intelligencer of Washington. The Intelligencer was the organ, in 1SOO, of the administration of Thomas Jefferson, being, in fact, the first recognized organ of the government in the United States. It continued to be the organ of government during the adminis trations of both Madison and Monroe. Thus it had great patronage, general circulation, and vast influence. Its owners and editors for many years were Joseph Gales, Jr., and William Winston Sea ton, who. being excellent reporters as well as excellent editors gave their journal a value not possessed by any other in those times. When The Intelligencer found itself in the opposition, and the organ of the minority, its editorial contributors embraced some of the first statesmen of the country, including Daniel Webster himself. As a party organ it has never been surpassed in efficiency, dignity, and preeminent respectability; and it finally became a recognized authority in questions of American political history with intelligent men of all parties. The Intelligencer had many able cooperative party organs in the country; but none were more efficient, it is believed, than two Western journals, during a considerable portion of the era of party organs. These were The Cincinnati Gazette, under the editorship of Charles Hammond, assisted by William D. Gallagher; and The Louisville Journal. George D. Prentice, editor. Mr. Hammond was a man of genius; a vigorous writer; a reformer. He infused into his paper a spirit of independence, quite unique at that time in public journalism, and thus gave to The Gazette a greater influence than it could otherwise have reached; and herein he forecast the power of the independent press. In the history of all these and other party organs of the era now under review, we shall find little of permanent value; little to admire, unless it be admirable to waste brilliant talents and undoubted genius in the discussion of topics of 106 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. ephemeral interest, and in the exclusive advocacy of policies of inconsiderable and temporary value. The essential error of this partizan journalism may well be considered as demon strated by the fact that the result of the rule of the contending parties of which the journals of the times were the organs, was a civil war of several years duration and most lamentable effects, growing out of a question which both parties had made "a finality" of by solemn act of Congress, and party resolu tions. It is also a notable fact that most of the old party organs have passed entirely out of existence; have been cast away into the useless debris of the past, and endless oblivion. Such, we may clearly see, is the certain fate of those which were the most distinguished in their generation. About the time the power of the party organs was at its highest development, circumstances and genius combined to transfer the centre of intelligence, as supplied by newspapers, from the National Capital to the Commercial Emporium of the nation. Intercourse between New- York and the country at large increased with the development of the material resources of the republic and the growth of the city. The statesmanship of De Witt Clinton had made New- York the trade-centre of the nation. Its merchants, manufacturers, bankers, capitalists, shippers, and others actively engaged in business formed a large and intelligent community, who cared less for acts of Congress than the price of commodities. The number of just such men in the country increased with the increase of trade. And, though politics sympathized with this movement, practical questions taking the place of what had now come to be abstractions, yet did other subjects of reflection and interest grow, in the aggregate, more attractive to large numbers of the public. Affairs of government ceased to be paramount to all others. The intelligence of the people undoubtedly increased at as rapid ratio as the country grew in wealth. They perceived that there might be too much of politics as well as too much government. Thus, with the increase of the variety of pursuits, of intelligence, of trade, the power of journals almost exclusively political naturally decreased. And the city of New- York, having become the THE SIX- PENNY JOURNALS. 107 financial and commercial centre of the nation, logically became the centre of current intelligence. The city of New- York had a number of daily journals of considerable circulation and unquestioned ability long before the establishment of the cheap or the independent press. These were six-penny journals, and were not hawked about the streets for sale by ragged newsboys. They were delivered to subscribers by regular carriers, and sold from stands at hotels and other places of public resort. It would not have been in accordance with the fitness of things for a six-penny journal of the old school to be sold by newsboys. But here the editorial abilities of William Cullen Bryant, the poet, were exercised through the columns of The Evening Post a journal which continues to exert large influence 1 Slid receive unbounded respect, having passed from the old to the new school without losing any of the good old ways or adopting any of the bad of the new. The celebrated James Watson Webb was long the editor of The Courier and Enquirer, which may be said to have ceased being a party organ upon its abandonment of Jackson, when he removed the govern ment deposits from the United States banks. Mr. M. M. Noah, for many years noted in New- York journalism and letters, quite distinguished on account of being once completely extinguished by Horace Greeley, was long connected with Colonel Webb s paper. The Express, edited by James and Erastus Brooks, came into existence after the new era had begun, but for some time clung to the old style. Mr. James Gordon Bennett had been editorially connected with several- of the six-penny journals before he founded The Herald. The names of others might be given, but we have enough in these to show that there was a great deal of talent in the " blanket- sheets," as they have since been often called, of the transition era between party organs and fearless journalism. Between the era of the six-penny journals, and the beginning of the era of what may well be called The Great Journals, there was a period which may be conveniently described as that of The Cheap Newspapers. They were the modest begin- 108 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. nings of journalism as an independent power in the republic and in Christendom. il The child is father of the man." The newsboys made the great journals of the present time possible. They were the progenitors of the express com panies; the news companies; which are but expanded news boys; practical machinery by which the little Pucks put girdles round about the earth in forty minutes. I We have already seen that the origin of cheap journals, with the introduction of newsboys, is due to The Morning Post, of which Story and Greeley were the printers during its short life. It was followed by The Sun, w r hich still continues to u shine for all." The first number of The Sun appeared, September 3, 1833 a very small paper, containing a few items of news, a shgrt story, a poem, police intelligence, and four columns of advertisements. But in two months The Sun had a circulation of two thousand, which in twelve months more was increased to eight thousand, which was probably more than double that of any six-penny journal in the city, and four or five times greater than some of the favourites of Wall street. The success of The Sun incited several men to undertake similar enterprises, some of which were for a time quite suc cessful, but it was not till 1835 that another great and perma nent success in cheap-for-cash papers was inaugurated. This was done by the genius and enterprise of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, the founder of The New-York Herald. Before the establishment of the paper which finally became the great journal with whose name that of Mr. Bennett will long be creditably connected, its founder had had considerable editorial experience upon party organs and six-penny u blanket- sheets." He was a man of great shrewdness, unusual energy, and uncommon intellectual parts. Thinking of the just renown of his later years, men are apt to forget that when he established The Herald, he was an adventurer: impecunious, unconscionable, seeming to be without principles except those which were bad; determined to succeed, success, in his view, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, The New York Evening Post. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, Sen. Founder of the .New- York Herald. .IAMES OOKDON BKNKETr. 109 as he was then constituted, being made up of power and money. The first number of this remarkable man s newspaper appeared May 6, 1835. Its price was one cent. It was in every respect superior to any of its cotemporary penny journals, but partic ularly in its reports of Wall street operations, which were very full, lively, and correct. They were prepared by Mr. Bennett himself. He may well be said, indeed, to have been the sole editor of The Herald for some time after its establishment. He assailed pretty much everything, except those things, the pandering to which might help the sale of The Herald. Mr. Bennett might appear to have been in irrepressible conflict with all things which were respectable and of good report. One would conclude that he had deliberately made up his inind that The Herald must live, and move, and have its being in sensations. If they were not to be had, ready-made, they were manufactured. And thus, the newsboys invariably having some taking cry with which to announce The Herald, its sales rapidly increased, and not many months after its initial num ber it had a larger circulation than any daily journal in tht city. Its price was raised to two cents, but without even i temporary decrease of sales. Railways and steamships no\\ coming in use, advantage thereof was promptly and fully taken by Mr. Bennett, so that both in the collection of news and the circulation of his paper he fairly beat any of his com petitors. There can be no doubt that in respect of newspaper enter prise, Mr. Bennett s example and influence conferred great interest upon his own journal and great benefit upon journal ism generally. But it is undeniable that in the earlier history of The Herald, its enterprise.was often most sadly misdirected. It assaulted those things which it ought to have defended, because to assail them was popular, and put money in the purse of The Herald s editor. It defended those things which it should have attacked, because to defend them was popular, and added to the sales and advertisements of The IS ew- York Herald. There was not a struggling reform, no matter how beneficent in nature, nor how devoted were its adherents, which was not ridiculed by The Herald. There was no popular vice, nor 110 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. peccadillo of general practice, which it did not in one way or another sustain. Its assaults upon discreditable operations of "Wall street were not made because the operations were discred itable, but because their exposure sold The Herald. Mr. Ben nett became involved in personal rencontres on the street, and was personally chastised in his own office, on account of offen sive articles. So far did he proceed in the course of pandering to popular prejudice, envy, the love of scandal, that it came to be said his hand was against every man s and every man s hand against his. The Herald came to be called an audacious, black mailing concern. As a matter of course it was assailed by other journals, none of which were equal to it in enterprise, and certainly none could compare with it in total abstinence from all that makes up principle. Hundreds of the most reputable citizens of New-York would not allow The Herald to be read by their families, or taken to their counting-rooms and offices. Such could not have been the case had not The Herald subjected itself to just and indignant criticism. No unjust assaults of envious cotemporaries could have brought about such a state of things. No matter if The Herald was not injured in circu lation and pecuniary value by these attacks. It was greatly I injured in this: that it failed to receive the respect of most \men whose opinions were entitled to most respect. Why? jBecause, in sober truth, The New- York Herald, in its earlier history, was the champion, or at best the apologist of the bad, and apparently the foe of the good in society. Corner-gro ceries and prize fights were of more value in its sight, than moral reforms and Christian civilization. Thus, it may be readily seen, The Herald created, so to speak, a vacuum in New- York journalism. There was a journal, with an extensive circulation, of audacity, of enter prise, of great influence; but there was not a journal of ft enterprise devoted, as well to the publication of the current intelligence of the times, as to making society better, by i proclaiming good and assailing evil. And this vacuum Horace Greeley rushed in to fill with The New-York Tribune. A New- York Herald made a New- York Tribune necessary. The THE TRIBUNE. Ill Log-Cabin, though started as a campaign paper, was continued after election, and was highly successful as a weekly journal. Its issue of April 3, 1841, contained the announcement of the proposed journal, in an advertisement as follows : "NEW -YORK TRIBUNE. " On Saturday, the tenth day of April instant, the Subscriber will pub lish the first number of a New Morning Journal of Politics, Literature, and General Intelligence. " The Tribune, as its name imports, will labour to advance the interests of the People, and to promote their Moral, Social, and Political well- being. The immoral and degrading Police Reports, Advertisements, and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading Penny Papers, will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fireside. "Earnestly believing that the political revolution which has called William Henry Harrison to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation was a triumph of Right Reason and Public Good over Error and Sinister Ambi tion, The Tribune will give to the New Administration a frank and cordial, but manly and independent support, judging it always by its acts, and commending those only so far as they shall seem calculated to subserve the great end of all government the welfare of the People. "The Tribune will be published every morning on a fair royal sheet (size of The Log-Cabin and Evening Signal) and transmitted to its city subscribers at the low price of one cent per copy. Mail subscribers, $4 per annum. It will contain the news by the morning s Southern Mail, which is contained in no other Penny Paper. Subscriptions are respect fully solicited by HORACE GREELEY, 30 Ann St." The welfare of the People such was believed to be the true object of government by Horace Greeley; to teach how best to bring about which would be the ruling ambition, the zealous, conscientious endeavour of The Tribune. The editor > did not propose to himself to be neutral in politics on the ou^/ hand, nor servile to party on the other. " They builded better than they knew " is true of most reformers. Mr. Greeley s main object was to infuse into political journalism independ ence, free discussion of u party measures " by the papers sustaining the party, the right of individual judgment. He expressly states that the moving consideration with him in the establishment of The Tribune was political the elevation of political journalism above mere partizanship, which, he 112 LIFE OF HORACE GBEELEY. thought, would !>e best for the party, and certainly most conducive to the welfare of the people. On this point he says: " My leading idea was the establishment of a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other. Party spirit is so fierce and intolerant in this country that the editor of a non-parlisan sheet is restrained from saying what he thinks and feels on the most vital, imminent topics; while, on the other hand, a Democratic, Whig, or Republican journal is generally expected to praise or blame, like or dislike, eulogize or condemn, in precise accordance with the views and interest of its party. I believed there was a happy medium between these extremes, a position from which a journalist might openly and heartily advocate the principles and commend the measures of that party to which his convictions allied him, yet frankly dissent from its course on a particular question, and even denounce its candidates, if they were shown to be deficient in capacity or (far worse) in integrity. I felt that a journal thus loyal to its guiding convictions, yet ready to expose and condemn unworthy condnct or incidental error on the part of men attached to its party, must be far more effective, even party-wise, than though it might always be counted on to applaud or reprobate, bless or curse, as the party s prejudices or immediate interest might seem to prescribe. Especially by the Whigs who were rather the loosely aggregated, mainly undisciplined opponents of a great party, than, in the stricter sense, a party themselves did I feel that such a journal was consciously needed, and would be fairly sustained. I had been a pretty constant and copious contributor (generally unpaid) to nearly or quite every cheap Whig journal that had, from time to time, been started in our city : most of them to fail after a very brief, and not particularly bright career; but one The New- York Whig, which was, throughout most of its existence, under the dignified and conscientious direction of Jacob B. Moore, formerly of The New Hampshire Journal had been continued through two or three years. My familiarity with its history and management gave me confidence that the right sort of a cheap Whig journal would be enabled to live. I had been ten years in New- York, was thirty years old, in full health and vigour, and worth, I presume, about two thousand dollars, half of it in printing materials. The Jeffersonian, and still more The Log-Cabin, had made me favourably known to many thousands of those who were most likely to take such a paper as I proposed to make The Tribune, while The New-Yorker had given me some literary standing and the reputation of a useful and well- informed compiler of election returns. In short, I was in a better position lo undertake the establishment of a daily newspaper than the great mass of those who try it and fail, as most who make the venture do and must. 1 presume the new journals (in English) since started in this city number not less than one hundred, whereof barely two The Times and The World can be fairly said to be still living; and The World is a mausoleum wherein the remains of The Evening Star, The American, and THE TRIBUNE. J 13 The Courier and Enquirer lie inurned; these having long ago swaliowed sundry of their predecessors. Yet several of those which havo meantime lived their little hour and passed away were conducted by men of decided ability and ripe experience, and were backed by a pecuniary capital at least twenty times greater than the fearfully inadequate sum whereon 1 started The Tribune." We thus perceive that the primary object of The Tribune A was to be the welfar^ of the people; the secondary object the / success of the Whig party. And this was the reverse of the rule of the partizan organs, whose universal practice was to sustain "the party, right or wrong," than which a more tearfully vicious and demoralizing course could not be devised. This was a long step forward in political journalism. It did*" x " not, it is true, place that journalism upon the plane of judicial impartiality, but it compelled the party to be more liberal in idea, more just and honest in administration, more careful in its selections of representative men. It banished the atrocious saying, that all is fair in politics; and compelled the represen- tatives of the party to account to the body politic they represented, instead of considering themselves masters. With this for its leading idea The New- York Tribune first appeared on the tenth day of April, 1841. It was retailed for one cent, and was hardly one-fourth as large as The Tribune is at present, even when it is without supplement. " Not much of a newspaper," says Mr. Greeley, " could be afforded for that price, even in those specie-paying times." The day upon which The Tribune was first cried by the newsboys was most unsea sonable, an extremely "raw" day of cold, sleet, and snow. Upon this day, New- York held her great funeral parade in honour of the late President Harrison. The chief marshal of this parade, General Robert Bogardus, soon afterwards died on account of exposure to the inclemencies of the scarcely less than terrible weather. Upon such an untoward, funereal day, it was not possible that any considerable number of copies of the new journal could be sold. About live hundred subscribers had been obtained for the paper, however, mainly by the zeal ous exertions of Mr. Greeley s warm personal and political friends, Mr. Noah Cook and Mr. James Coggeshall, which 114: LIFE OF HOBACE GKEELEY. were delivered by carriers. Of the first number, says Mr. Greeley, "I printed five thousand, and nearly succeeded in giving away all of them that would not sell." Such was the modest manner in which The New- York Trib une was ushered into the world. Mr. Greeley did not consider himself worth at this time more than two thousand dollars, half of which consisted of printing materials. Printers will know hence that, unless he had gone in debt for it, The Tribune could not be printed in The Tribune office. Mr. Greeley s whole fortune would not have sufficed to buy a single press of capacity to work off the paper. As a matter of fact, he hired his presswork done at another office paying therefor so much a token two hundred and forty sheets. The necessary expenses of the office were about $525 for the first week. The receipts were $92. Surplus of outgo over income, $433. It is clear that with cash in hand to begin with of only one thousand dollars, this venture, at this rate, would soon be a total wreck. Mi-. Coggeshall, above mentioned, voluntarily loaned Mr. Greeley $1000, which enabled him to move on. Moreover, though the expenses inevitably increased with the improve ments rapidly made upon the paper, the receipts increased at greater ratio, until the latter nearly equallal the former, when an event of rare good fortune in the history of Mr. Greelev occurred. This was his forming a partnership in the publica tion of The Tribune with Mr. Thomas McElrath. When Hor ace Greeley was engaged in his first work in New- York setting up that terribly lean New Testament, at West s, on Chatham Street, it will be recollected, the printing-office was over the publishing house of McElrath & Bangs, the senior of which firm was the gentleman of whom we now speak. Young Greeley s odd ways and queer costume were the subject of much fun-making, doubtless; but his intelligence, his wit and humour, his generosity and probity were equally the subject of admiring comment. Mr. McElrath, a very unobtrusive, very observing man, a sort of silent male Jane Eyre, could hardly fail to put the young printer from the country down among his mental memoranda, with an eye to his future career. Mr. McElrath became a successful lawyer, and as such was THOMAS M ELRATH. 115 widely and favourably known when The Tribune appeared. But Mi 1 . Greeley s personal acquaintance with him had been very slight. He was surprised, therefore, upon receiving a call from Mr. McElrath and a voluntary proposition from him of partnership in the " still struggling but hopeful enterprise." The result of the interview is described by Mr. Greeley: " He offered to invest two thousand dollars as an equivalent to whatever I had in the business, and to devote his time and energies to its manage ment, on the basis of perfect equality in ownership and in sharing the proceeds. This I very gladly accepted ; and from that hour my load was palpably lightened. During the ten years or over that The Tribune was issued by Greeley & McElrath, my partner never once indicated that my anti-Slavery, anti-Hanging, Socialist, and other frequent aberrations from the straight and narrow path of Whig partisanship, were injurious to our common interest, though he must often have sorely felt that they were so ; and never, except when I (rarely) drew from the common treasury more money than could well be spared, in order to help some needy friend whom he judged beyond help, did he even look grieved at anything I did. On the other hand, his business management of the concern, though never brilliant, nor specially energetic, was so safe and judicious that it gave me 110 trouble, and scarcely required of me a thought, during that long era of all but unclouded prosperity." Mr. Greeley announced the partnership in litting terms in The Tribune of July 31st, his statement being followed by that of Mr. McElrath: " The undersigned, in connecting himself with the conduct of a public journal, invokes a continuance of that courtesy and good feeling which has been extended to him by his fellow-citizens. Having heretofore received evidence of kindness and regard from the conductors of the Whig press in this city and rejoicing in the friendship of most of them, it will be his aim in his new vocation to justify that kindness and strengthen and increase those friendships. His hearty concurrence in the principles, Political and Moral, on which The Tribune has thus far been conducted, has been a principal incitement to the connection here announced ; and the statement of this fact will preclude the necessity of any special decla ration of opinions. With gratitude for past favours, and an anxious desire to merit a continuance of regard, he remains, The Public s humble sen-ant, THOMAS MCELRATH." It will thus be seen that in the opinion of Thomas McElrath, The Tribune had established the fact that it had principles, both political and moral. Herein certainly lay one of the rea- 1 116 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEV. sons of its success. It was believed by many that the other cheap journals of the city, with which The Tribune chiefly came into competition, were not largely supplied with either the one or the other. But it was not only that The Tribune had a higher political and moral tone than its rival cheap-for- cash journals at this time, but because of other good reasons also, that it was greeted by many warm friends from the begin ning, whose number constantly increased. It extended hearty welcome to American writers and thinkers, generously encuur- aging literature. It cheerfully welcomed to its columns the icontributions of those who had new ideas, popular or unpop- lular, claimed to be of practical use and benefit to men. Herein The Tribune was not circumscribed by the lines either of party or of creed. It would blot out no moral, or political, or social light, let its rays come from whatsoever sphere they might. It cheerfully extended advocacy to any idea or reform which might augment the welfare of the people. Such was the general character, affirmatively, of The New- York Tribune from the beginning. But besides these causes tending to give it success, it gained many friends among the better classes of community, because it would not publish articles and advertisements of immoral and vicious influence. Herein, because the lines were not drawn at all by some other journals, The Tribune doubtless drew them too tightly at first. Nevertheless, as the times then were, it was better to err on the side of too much rigidity than on that of too much loose ness. It inaugurated among cheap papers an era of Journal istic Integrity, and was respected accordingly. From the moment Mr. McElrath took" his seat in the counting-room as business manager, Horace Greeley having abundance of capacity to manage affairs up stairs, The New- York Tribune was a great success. A quarter of a century after he had founded The Tribune, Mr. Greeley gave a rapid sketch of its history from the beginning: "The Tribune, as it first appeared, was but the germ of wnat I sought to make it. No journal sold for a cent could ever be much more than a dry summary of the most important or the most interesting occurrences THE TRIBUNE. 117 of the day; and such is not a newspaper, in the higher sense of the term. We need to know, not only what is done, but what is purposed and said, by those who sway the destinies of states and realms; and, to this end, the prompt perusal of the manifestoes of monarchs, presidents, ministers, legislators, etc., is indispensable. No man is even tolerably informed in our day who does not regularly keep the run of events and opinions, through the daily perusal of at least one good journal; and the ready cavil that no one can read all that a great modern journal contains, only proves the ignorance or thoughtlessness of the caviller. No one person is expected to take such an interest in the rise and fall of stocks, the markets for cotton, cattle, grain, and goods, the proceedings of Congress, Legisla tures, and Courts, the politics of Europe, and the ever-shifting phases of Spanish-American anarchy, etc., etc., as would incite him to a daily perusal of the entire contents of a metropolitan city journal of the first rank. The idea is rather to embody in a single sheet the information daily required by all those who aim to keep posted on every important occurrence ; so that the lawyer, the merchant, the banker, the forwarder, the economist, the author, the politician, etc., may find here whatever he needs to see, and be spared the trouble of looking elsewhere. A copy of a great morning journal now contains more matter than an average twelvemo volume, and its production costs far more, while it is sold for a fortieth or fiftieth part of the volume s price. There is no other miracle of cheapness which at all approaches it. The Electric Telegraph has precluded the multiplication of journals in the great cities, by enormously increasing the cost of publishing each of them. The Tribune, for example, now pays more than one hundred thousand dollars per annum for intellectual labour (reporting included) in and about its office, and one hundred thousand dollars more for correspondence and telegraphing, in other words, for collecting and transmitting news. And, while its income has been largely increased from year to year, its expenses have inevitably been swelled even more rapidly; so that, at the close of 1866, in, which its receipts had been over nine hundred thousand dollars, its expenses had been very nearly equal in amount, leaving no profit beyond a fair rent for the premises it owned and occupied. And yet its stockholders were satisfied that they had done a good business, that the increase in the patronage and value of the establishment amounted to a fair interest on their investment, and might well be accepted in lieu of a dividend. In the good time coming, with cheaper paper and less exorbitant charges for cable despatches from the Old World, they will doubtless reap where they have now faithfully sown. Yet they realize and accept the fact, that a journal radically hostile to the gainful arts whereby the cunning and powerful few live sumptuously without useful labour, and often amass wealth, by pandering to lawless sensuality and popular vice, can never hope to enrich its publishers so rapidly nor so vastly as though it had a soft side for the Liquor Traffic, and for all kindred allurements to carnal appetite and sensual indulgence. " Fame is a vapour; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only 118 LIFE OF HOKACE GKEELEY. earthly certainty is oblivion ; no man can foresee what a day may bring forth ; while those who cheer to-day will often curse to-morrow ; and yet I cherish the hope that the journal I projected and established will live and flourish long after I shall have mouldered into forgotten dust, being guided by a larger wisdom, a more unerring sagacity to discern the right, though not by a more unfaltering readiness to embrace and defend it at whatever personal cost ; and that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligible inscription, Founder of The New- York Tribune. " 8 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 143. CHAPTEE VIII. THE TRIBUNE HISTORY EDITORS AND CORRESPONDENTS. Early Successes of The Tribune Contest with The Sun Henry J. Ray mond, First Assistant Editor Establishment of The Weekly Tribune Its Remarkable Success The Era of Newspaper Expresses Foreign News and Correspondence Distinguished Correspondents, at this Time and Afterwards, of The Tribune Bayard Taylor; Margaret Fuller; Thomas Hughes; Emilio Castelar; M. D. Conway; G. W. Smalley ; Kane O Donnell Notable Associate Editors of The Tribune Charles A. Dana ; George Ripley; Solon Robinson; William H. Fry; George M. Snow; and Others Hearty Accord of AlltfTith Mr. Gree- ley s General Views A Journal Earnestly Devoted to the Welfare of the People The Fenimore Cooper Libel Suit V THE TRIBUNE succeeded in commanding the general respect and in constantly gaining substantial friends, from its first num ber. Two things it is necessary for a positive, progressive man to have, in order that he may be stirred to achieve the best success. These are: first-rate friends; and first-rate enemies. In effect, such a man s first-rate enemies are his most efficient friends; and it really requires very little grace for a genuinely great man to love his enemies. It is often but the prompting of common gratitude. Mr. Greeley had only fairly got The Tribune going, suc ceeding, however, in beating his rivals in some matters of important intelligence, when the conductors of The Sun made an attempt to put him down by main force and street brawls. The Evening Signal, then edited by Mr. Park Benjamin, told how The Sun undertook not to outshine, but to crush The Tribune: The publisher of The Sun has, during the past few days, got up a conspiracy to crush The New-York Tribune. The Tribune was, from its inception, very successful, and, in many instances, persons in the habit of taking The Sun, stopped that paper wisely preferring a sheet which gives twice the amount of reading matter, and always contains the latest (119) 120 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. intelligence. This fact afforded sufficient evidence to Beach, as it did to all others who were cognizant of the circumstances, that The Tribune would, before the lapse of many weeks, supplant The Sun. To prevent this, and, if possible, to destroy the circulation of The Tribune altogether, an attempt was made to bribe the carriers to give up their routes ; for tunately this succeeded only in the cases of two men who were likewise 1 carriers of The Sun. In the next place, all the newsmen were threatened with being deprived of The Sun, if, in any instance, they were found selling The Tribune. But these efforts were not enough to gratify Beach. He instigated boys in his office, or others, to whip the boys engaged in selling The Tribune. No sooner was this fact ascertained at the office of The Tribune, than young men were sent to defend the sale of that paper. They had not been on their station long, before a boy from The Sun office approached and began to flog the lad with The Tribune: retributory rneasures were instantly resorted to ; but before a just chastisement was inflicted, Beach himself, and a man in his employ, came out to sustain their youthful emissary. The whole matter will, we understand, be sub mitted to the proper magistrates." The proper magistrates in this case were the public, who took sides with The Tribune in large numbers, swelling the list of regular subscribers in the city from three to four hun dred a day. This was the magnificent act of friendship the first great enemy of The Tribune did for that journal before it was a month old. Without the enemy, all its friends could not have done so much. It need hardly be said that The Tribune gave back the blows of The Sun, but not in street- brawl fashion. It used some vigourous English in expressing its opinion of that journal, and published the best news first. If in those days The Tribune were a little boastful in its triumphs over an enemy who had descended to bullyisrn, let it be remembered that Horace Greeley was only thirty years old. He had not become the Philosopher of later years. But he went on, working hard, and succeeding in making a better and better paper every .day. The early success of The Tribune cannot be better shown than by the statement that the increase of its sales per week was about five hundred copies until they reached ten thousand, which, with Mr. McElrath in the office, fairly placed the journal on its feet. Mr. Greeley s first assistant-editor on The Tribune was Henry J. Eaymond, afterwards the distinguished editor of The Daily Times, one of America s most noted politicians, one of HENRY J. RAYMOND. 121 the world s great journalists. When in college, Mr. Raymond had contributed a number of essays to The New-Yorker. He was graduated, at the University of Vermont, in the sum mer of 1840, being then about twenty years of age, and returning to his home in the State of New York, entered zealously into the " Tippecanoe " campaign. Mr. Raymond may be said to have been born a politician. He made a number of speeches during the campaign, and entered into joint discussions with experienced debaters, acquitting him self in all with great credit. After the election, he proceeded to New- York, where he was for a time " adrift." turning: his O hand to what he could find to do: reading a little law, writing a little for The New-Yorker, but unable at first to procure a regular situation. He asked Mr. Greeley for the position of assistant-editor, but it was at the time filled. He did some \vork daily in the office, however, for which he received very little compensation; just that much more, however, whatsoever the amount, than Mr. Greelev had received for his first essays / J in journalism. At length Mr. Raymond advertised for a school in the South, and while awaiting replies, did considera ble work on The New-Yorker. Speaking of this period of his life he says: " I added up election returns, read the exchanges for news, and discovered a good deal which others had overlooked; made brief notices of new books, read proof, and made myself generally useful. At the end of about three weeks I received the first reply to my advertisement, offering me a school of thirty scholars in North Carolina. I told Mr. Greeley at once that I should leave the city the next morning. He asked me to walk with him to the post-office, whither he always went in person to get his letters and exchanges, and on the way inquired where I was going. I told him to North Carolina to teach a school. He asked me how much they would pay me. I said four hundred dollars a year. Oh, said he, stay here I ll give you that. And this was my first engagement on the Press, and decided the whole course of my life." When The Tribune was established, Mr. Raymond was made first assistant-editor. He entered upon the duties with great 122 LIFE OF HORACE GKKELEY. zeal and discharged them with wonderful efficiency. Mr Greeley says : * I had not much for him to do till The Tribune was started; then I had enough; and I never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies, who evinced so much and so versatile ability in journalism as he did. Abler and stronger men I may have met; a cleverer, readier, more generally efficient journalist I never saw. He remained with me eight years, if my memory serves, and is the only assistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing more work than any human brain and frame could be expected long to endure. His salary was of course gradually increased from time to time; but his services were more valuable in proportion to their cost than those of any one else who ever worked on The Tribune." It appears from Mr. Maverick s Life of Raymond, that Mr. Greeley s memory was at fault in regard to the time Mr. Ray mond remained on The Tribune. He left that journal and became connected with The Courier and Enquirer in 1843. But it would have been difficult for Mr. Greeley to over estimate the service rendered him and his journal during its first two years by Mr. Raymond. He appears to have helped in almost every department of the paper and to have infused his dashing, gentlemanly spirit into all. He wrote editorials; "scissorsed" from the exchanges; prepared much literary matter, including notices of books; reported public meetings; and, in fine, made himself a great deal more than "generally useful." He was very particularly useful indeed. His salary was only eight dollars a week at first. That Mr. Greeley did not forthwith more than double it was doubtless due to two facts: First, The Tribune was paying out more money than it was receiving. It was not a good time for raising salaries; and he himself was getting none. Secondly, Mr. Greeley had himself worked for very inadequate salary; it had only been a few years since he would have gladly laboured at his trade "for fifteen dollars a month and board or even less;" it had been a fewer number of years since, not earning so much as Mr. Raymond s first pay on The Tribune, he had nevertheless been able to remit money to his father on the frontier. When, HENRY J. RAYMOND. 1.23 therefore, Mr. Raymond, who had actually worked himself sick, declared that he would not return for less than twenty dollars a week, so far from Mr. Greeley s momentary surprise and opposition being evidence of his want of appreciation of Mr. Raymond s services, the fact that he at once acceded to the demand conclusively proves the contrary. Twenty dollars a week was then a good deal of money; unquestionably more than the Editor received; daily journals were not started with an immense sinking-fund in bank. Not to consider the difference in circumstances affecting the pay of writers between the time when The Tribune was founded on Horace Greeley s talents, and the time when The Times was estab lished on Henry J. Raymond s talents and money enough to run a bank, is to manifest not only palpable injustice but palpable stupidity as well. It is hardly possible that Mr. Greeley could have found an assistant so competent greatly to aid him in building up a paper as Mr. Raymond. And this, not only because of that gentleman s great abilities as a journalist: his capacity to write remarkably well and with wonderful rapidity upon a great variety of topics: but because, though several years younger than the chief editor, he had far more varied culture, and was much better acquainted with the opinions, habits, customs, prejudices, of polite society. Mr. Greeley was apt to go ahead in the course which his conscience and judgment pointed out as right. Mr. Raymond considered it the part of wisdom to pay some deference to the opinions of others, right or wrong; and he esteemed as essentially correct some things in established society which Mr. Greeley regarded as essentially vicious. In short, the conservative element lacking in Mr. Greeley was abundant in Mr. Raymond, who gave The Tribune much of its popularity in the city of New- York among the cultivated and fashionable classes. He had great respect for Christianity, as represented by what is commonly called orthodoxy. Mr. Greeley was decidedly heterodox. In the then existing state of journalism, Mr. Raymond was, it will thus be seen, as valuable an adviser to the editor of The Tribune as he could have obtained. It will certainly not be 124 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. claimed that Mr. Raymond was a better representative of the moral elements in community than Mr. Greeley, in his own life and character, but he certainly was less pugnacious. He did not push unpopular opinions, regardless of consequences. His policy, his amiability were invaluable to Mr. Greeley at this particular juncture; and his brilliant genius as a journalist would have incalculably benefitted any journal at any time. This was shown by his subsequent career on The Courier and Enquirer, and by the magnificent success which he achieved on The New- York Times. And so, what with Greeley s trenchant blows, and Raymond s politic leaders, and the wonderful hard work of both, almost accomplishing miracles, The Tribune went on conquering and to conquer. In the Autumn of 1841, The New-Yorker and The Log- Cabin were discontinued. In their stead appeared The Weekly Tribune. This was made up from the daily, at first; the selec tions of articles, news, etc., being made with great care, the whole designed for popular reading. It was, like The Daily Tribune, a success from the start, and in the course of a few years gained a circulation and influence throughout the country not then nor since approached by any political jour nal. Every city, town, and village, every country post-office had its " club," in some cases many clubs, of subscribers to The Weekly Tribune. Its circulation subsequently became some three hundred thousand, and its rates of advertising the highest that had ever been known. No weekly journal, con nected with a daily, was ever half so successful as this; no newspaper was ever so influential with the people. If The Log-Cabin had not made Mr. Greeley s name familiar in all parts of the country, The Weekly Tribune would have done it. As a matter of fact, it became a sort of never-ending u cam paign paper"; a political gospel for vast numbers of people; and yet it was ever and anon advocating " isms " which were unpopular, and never had any of the old-fashioned subserviency to party. During the continuance of the Whig party, it was independently Whig, with undisguised "free-soil" tendencies. In the interregnum of parties between the final overthrow of the Whigs by the defeat of 1852 and the organization of the HENRY J. RAYMOND, Founder of the New-York Times. MANTON MARBLE, The Ne-w-York World. NEWS BY SPECIAL EXPRESS. 125 Republican party, it was almost fiercely independent, going strong against prevailing know-nothingism, but greatly aided in the formation of the party which made its first gen- oral engagement in 1856, and won its first national victory four years afterwards in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. Before the days of the electric telegraph, there were many iiews expresses, whereby public journals were enabled to furnish intelligence of current events in advance of the mails. It is a mistake to suppose that this species of enterprise originated with the cheap dailies. Before their existence, The New- York Journal of Commerce regularly received its news from Washington by its own express, beating the mail many hours. The time between Washington and New- York was twenty hours. There were twenty-four relays of horses. The speed was about as good as the original speed of railway trains on the old-fashioned flat rails. Other journals had adopted the plan on important special occasions; and those of Boston long received news of elections throughout all Massa chusetts in this way. The enterprise w r as suffered to languish, however, and, so far as New- York was concerned, to become obsolete. The fierce rivalry growing out of the establishment of the penny press revived it. There were expresses by horses, by rail, by steamboat, by ocean steamer. Between Albany and New- York, the steamboats often carried compositors, with well-filled cases, to set up matter supplied by reporters on board, or who had given the Albany news up to the moment of a boat s departure. Between Halifax and New- York this news-express rivalry was greatest. A single express messenger sometimes came through using horses, railway engines, and Sound steamers all under newspaper "charter" on different parts of the route. At length a vessel was fitted out and sailed to Europe and return for news for The Tribune and associated journals. The expense of these expresses was enormous, but the result was profit to the papers, and their general steady improvement both in the quantity and quality of their current intelligence. One of the greatest triumphs of The Tribune in this special express enterprise was achieved 126 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. by Mr. Raymond. It was thus related after Mr. Raymond s death: " Before the days of the telegraph, Raymond was sent to Boston to report a speech of Daniel Webster, then in the height of his popularity. Rival city journals also despatched their reporters, each selecting for tin- purpose two of their best short-hand writers to work against Mr. Ray mond. The speech was delivered, and proved to be one of Mr. Webster s greatest achievements. The several New-York reporters took the night- boa-t to return to New- York, and all, save Mr. Raymond, gave themselves up to such enjoyment during the evening as the boat afforded. Mr. Ray mond sat quietly in the back cabin, and was observed to be writing furiously. Presently one of the reporters had his suspicions aroused, and setting out on an exploring expedition, found that Mr. Raymond had on board a small printing-office, fully equipped. His manuscript was taken page by page to the compositors, set up immediately, and on the arrival of the boat in New- York, at five o clock in the morning, Mr. Raymond s report, making several columns of The Tribune, was all in type. These columns were put into the forms at once, and the readers of that journal were, at six A. M., served with a full report of Daniel Webster s speech delivered in Boston on the previous afternoon. This, at that time, was one of the greatest journalistic feats on record, and so completely astonished and astounded The Tribune s rivals that they never published the reports furnished by their short-hand writers, but acknowledged them selves fairly beaten." Those who were not readers of public journals during the era of the newspaper expresses can hardly imagine how ardent was the rivalry; how exultant was the victor; how ehagrinned the defeated. It may now be said without fear of provoking wrath, that there was no little " sharp practice " all around, and that in the average one journal was about as often victorious as another. The notable difference between The Tribune and The Herald was that, when The Tribune did happen to be beaten, it owned up more ingenuously than its cotemporary. In this kind of news The Herald always was very slow indeed. The foreign news brought by each steamship made a gala- day for the great journals, of course. It was customary then and still is with some of them to give a summary of the news in display headings, which sometimes were so magnifi cently displayed as to occupy more space than the news! A collection of these headings would make a curious and instruct- THOMAS HUGHES. 127 ive volume. The ha penny worth of news to the monstrous deal of headings was the exception, not the rule. The attention given to foreign news by The Tribune, especially to European intelligence, was ever very great. Its editorials upon current events in that continent, literature, poli tics, were carefully prepared by competent writers. Early in its history, it employed correspondents familiar with affairs, who unquestionably gave its readers from time to time far more full and faithful accounts of events than any European journal ever presented of American affairs. It will not be forgotten that the now distinguished author, Mr. Bayard Tay lor, achieved his first marked success as a correspondent of The Tribune. The most successful of Americans among writers of travels, he is also eminent as poet, novelist, and lecturer; but his "Views A-Foot," which first appeared in the form of letters to The Tribune, is even yet regarded by many as his most pleasing work. Mr. Greelev himself, as we shall presently see, visited Europe in 1851, and thence contrib uted to his journal a series of letters of uncommon interest. But before this Margaret Fuller, whom Mr. Greeley described as " the loftiest, bravest soul that has yet irradiated the form of an American woman." wrote at irregular intervals a num ber of letters to The Tribune such as she only could write. It is worthy of remark that The Tribune afterwards had on its corps of regular correspondents some of the most illustri ous minds of Europe. For several years Mr. Thomas Hughes quite regularly wrote letters to The Tribune from London. He thus gave incalulable value and interest to that journal among thoughtful men, during that momentous period of reform in British law which resulted in a beneficent triuriiph of religious freedom, great extension of the right of voting, the elevation of such radical reformers and noble philanthro pists to the the control of the English government as William Gladstone and John Bright. Eminent in this peaceful revo lution was Mr. Hughes, who was for some years a member of the House of Commons. It need not be stated to the intelli gent that the name of this great reformer of British politics stands high in English literature. The author of School- 128 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. Days at Rugby" and "Tom Brown at Oxford" will scarcely be forgotten till the proudest monuments of English learning shall have crumbled into ruins. Still later in The Tribune s history did it have among its- regular European correspondents one of the most illustrious orators and statesmen of Spain. -I refer to Ernilio Castelar, at this writing (February, 1873) Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of the Republic, proclaimed upon the abdication of King Amadeus. His wonderful eloquence might persuade us that, after long and weary and suffering journey- ings, his country had come in view of a heroic era, if not in possession. The outpourings of his stirring oratory are not more grand than his meditations are comprehensive, thorough, and wise. His contributions to The Tribune were of the highest interest and the greatest value. Other distinguished Europeans have been on the corresponding corps of The Tribune. And, again, after our American civil war, and when Mexico, in consequence of the interference of European governments in her behalf, had become, after the death of Maximilian, a scene of world-wide interest, The Tribune sent thither a special correspondent, whose careful letters, over the signature of K. O .D." furnished the reading world with reliable intel ligence, and had great influence in disabusing the public mind of erroneous opinions in regard to the Republic and President Juarez. These notable letters were written by Mr. Kane O Donnell, a gentleman of rare genius and talents and culti vated taste; a man of touching modesty but of heroic courage, who fell a victim to the dread disease of consumption, just as he reached the prime of manhood and might soon have attained the general recognition of his great abilities and his culture. The London letters of The Tribune have always been of the highest merit. Mr. Gr. W. Smalley has for some time had charge of the bureau there. His letters and dispatches have long been among the most attractive contributions to The Tribune. The Rev. M. D. Conway has also for some years contributed to The Tribune from London letters both of intelligential and literary MEWSPAl KK GOVEKNMENT. 129 value. But nut to multiply instances, it is undoubtedly true that during the late Franco-Prussian war, The i^ew-York Tribune supplied the public with the best, most accurate, most elaborate reports of events as they transpired. By this means, the American people were furnished with intelligence of the most momentous events transpiring in Europe before the peo ple of Europe were. It is universally conceded, I believe, that the enterprise of The Tribune herein was the greatest achieve ment of the kind with which modern journalism is credited. But much of this is anticipation. I have thought it propei to state the general facts here, as not out of logical, though somewhat out of chronological, order. The foreign corres pondence early inaugurated by The Tribune soon comprehended most portions of the world. It is especially noteworthy that wherever humanity struggled against oppression; wherever a contest was being waged for freedom, for labour, for progress; wherever the people rose against unjust law and wicked sys tems, there The Xew-York Tribune was sure to have its representative, who represented alike that journal and the wel fare of the people. Thus The Tribune came to be regarded as representative in America of genuine republicanism, and was as such esteemed by the republicans of other lands, whilst some other American journals were petted and puffed by the friends of monarchy, aristocracy, and the upholders of injustice. Let us now return to The Tribune at home and take a view of its immediate control. It is to be observed, in the first place, that the government of a newspaper must of necessity be essentially autocratic. Otherwise it would be at cross purposes with itself one day with another, or even on the same day, and become a laughing stock. Such fate of journals is not unheard of. But. secondly, one who is fit to write for a great journal, must needs have a high degree of intellectual self-respect, and will not become one of the corps," unless regard be shown to his opinions and judgment. He will not degrade himself, nor let any one degrade him, to the rank of a " Bohemian, " which, I take it, is about the lowest grade to which the human intellect can be reduced, unless, indeed, it be the grade so crowded by the 9 ISO I-H T. OK HO1JAOK OBEKLET. Jenkinses. As it requires many minds to produce a great journal, we have, then, a necessity of absolute government and of the most liberal judgment on the part of The Editor. There are few men capable of successfully tilling this anoma lous position, so that there are at least a hundred excellent edi torial writers to one excellent editor. Mr. Greeley was exceed ingly wise, or wonderfully fortunate in the selection of his assistant and associate editors. Mr. Charles A. Dana was the first who held the rank of "managing editor " on The Tribune staff. He became editor ially connected with the paper not very long after its establish ment. At this time Mr. Dana was a Socialist who believed in reforming: things from the foundation. A man of liberal o O culture, enthusiastic nature, untiring energy; a brilliant, dash ing writer upon a great variety of topics; with a fine genius for journalism: he won the hearty affection and high admira tion of Mr. Greeley, and, I believe, retained both, until he so widely differed with his chief editor in regard to the policy the paper should pursue, that he retired in 1861, being succeeded by Mr. Gay. Our country has produced few more accom plished journalists than Charles A. Dana; not one, perhaps, who has done so much editorial work in addition to other important and influential intellectual labour, except Mr. Greeley alone, and, it may be, Mr. Raymond. Associated with Mr. Dana in the corps editorial of The Tribune during the whole period of his management. \vas Mr. George Ripley, connected with Mr. Dana also, as is well known, in editing the New Amerkan Cyclopedia. Mr. Ripley has for many years been the literary editor of The Tribune, a depart ment which he has made of surpassing value to the intelligent public and a powerful means of instructing and elevating the general taste. Mr. Solon Robinson, author of " Hot Corn," was long the editor of the agricultural department of The Tribune, a department in which Mr. Greeley unquestionably took as much interest as he did in any except that of news and of politics. If the real service rendered to the country by The New- York Tribune in the way of increasing the knowledge and adding CHARLES A. DANA, The New-York Sun. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, Jr., The New- York Herald. TRIBUNE WRITERS. 131 to the honourable ambition of the farmers of the republic- were weighed in the balance with that of the governmental bureau at Washington, called the Agricultural Department, the latter would instantly kick the beam. We have had few agricultural editors who have so ably combined interest with practical value in their essays and reports as Solon Robinson. During Mr. Dana s management. Bayard Taylor was also at times on the staff. One of the most efficient writers amone: the O associate editors was William H. Fry, the distinguished musi cian and musical critic. He was also a forcible writer of political articles, a man heartily hating all forms of injustice, and capable of expressing his ideas in terse, classical, elegant English, and sometimes leaving a lasting sting in the wounds he made. The money articles by Mr. George M. Snow were ever greatly valued by the circles which those articles are mainly designed to serve. Others then or since distinguished as journalists were Mr. Greeley s associate-editors during the period in which Mr. Dana was managing-editor. Men who during these years were of The Tribune staff have since become distinguished in departments of government, in diplomacy, in science, and in letters. Mr. Dana himself, it will be recollected, was assistant Secretary of War under the great War Secretary, Edwin M. Stanton, and greatly -aided him in organizing victory for the Union arms. Fitz Henry Warren became a Brigadier-General, and after the war represented the republic in a foreign land. Mr. Harvey, who some time represented the United States near Lisbon, had been in charge of The Tribune bureau at Wash ington. But not now further to anticipate, it may be gathered from what has been set forth as to the history of the journal foun ded and conducted by Horace Greeley, that it became a great establishment within a few years after the stormy, dark and dreary day on which it made its first appearance. At the head of it was he who came to be confessedly the greatest of jour nalists. He had about him, as his Lieutenant and his editorial associates, men of notable intellectual power, of vast and varied accomplishments, of reformatory spirit; all devoted to 132 LIFE OF HOKACE GKEELEY. their chief, with singular affection, even more devoted to The Tribune, if possible. And they all knew that he was more devoted to The Tribune than he was to himself. The journal, us we have seen, was in every respect enterprising. It had correspondents in different parts of the republic, and a well- organized bureau at the National Capital. Moreover, the character of The Tribune was such that it ever had an army of volunteer contributors among the thoughtful men and women of the country. A new idea did not start it from its propriety; and we have never had a journal so conspicuously noted for fair-play. Thus, without injuriously abridging intel ligence of current events, it surpassed its cotemporaries in intelligence of current thought, more especially the thought of the general body politic, of the common people, as we say. Mr. Coleridge, had he lived to see the sight, might have said The New- York Tribune was a very great newspaper both objectively and subjectively. It gave the best accounts of things taking place in the world without and the world within. Many minds of all countries paid their willing tribute to The Tribune, not only because of its own enterprise, but because from its origin its paramount object was plainly manifest the welfare of the people. Of its conflicts in this behalf, of its "isms" which were unpopular, of its visions which have become beneficent realities, we shall have occasion to speak as we go along the journey of The Editor s life. Here, it may be well enough to relate an account of Mr. Greeley s connexion with libel suits, one series of which grew out of criticism in The Tribune on the novelist, J. Fenimore Cooper. Mr. Greeley remarks in his "Recollections," that " editorial life has many cares, sundry enjoyments, with certain annoyances; and prominent among these last are libel-suits. I can hardly remember a time when I was absolutely exempt from these infestations. In fact, as they seem to be a main reliance for support of certain attorneys, destitute alike of character and law, I suppose they must be borne for an indefinite period." The most notable libel-suit in which Mr. Greeley became involved was with the distinguished novelist just named, and THE FENLMORE COOPER LIBEL- SUITS. 133 this not very long after the founding of The Tribune. Mr. Cooper had long resided abroad, and during this absence from home, unless nature had originally bestowed them upon him, had acquired aristocratic feelings and arrogant bearing, the former of which were sufficiently manifested in his works "Homeward Bound," and "Home as Found." 7 A "Western journalist, since a Senator of the United States, might have said that Mr. Cooper had become a member of " the cat-fish aristocracy." 1 He became involved in difficulties with his neighbours, and a newspaper of the village of Cooperstown took up the quarrel, berating the novelist with no little vigour. Mr. Cooper brought an action for libel, recovered judgment, and collected the money by means rather harsh than otherwise. A number of journals now took up the cudgels and belaboured the novelist rather heavily and lively. Among them was The Albany Evening Journal, edited by Thurlow Weed, who, with others, was drawn into libel-suits. Mr. Weed, by reason of sickness in his family, did not attend court so promptly as he should have done, whereupon a judgment for $400 was entered up against him. Mr. Weed sent to The Tribune the following account of the case: " MR. FENIMORE COOPER AND HIS LIBELS. " FONDA, Nov. 17, 1841. "To THE EDITOR OF THE TRIBUNE: " The Circuit Court now sitting here is to be occupied chiefly with the lesral griefs of Mr. Fenimore Cooper, who has determined to avenge him self upon the Press for having contributed by its criticisms to his waning popularity as a novelist. " The handsome Mr. Effingham has three cases of issue here, two of which are against Col. Webb, Editor of The Courier and Enquirer, and one against Mr. Weed, Editor of The Albany Evening Journal. " Mr. Weed not appearing on Monday (the first day of court), Cooper moved for judgment by default, as Mr. Weed s counsel had not arrived. Col. Webb, who on passing through Albany, called at Mr. Weed s house, and learned that his wife was seriously and his daughter dangerously ill, requested Mr. Sacia to state the facts to the Court, and ask a day s delay. Mr. Sacia made, at the same time, an appeal to Mr. Cooper s humanity. But that appeal, of course, was an unavailing one. The novelist pushed 1 1 refer to the Hon. J. .1. Ingalls, Senator from Kansas, who, I believe, originated the expression quoted. 134 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. his advantage. The Court, however, ordered the cause to go over till the next day, with the understanding that the default should be entered then if Mr. Weed did not appear. Col. Webb then despatched a messenger to Mr. Weed with this information. The messenger returned with a letter from Mr. Weed, stating that his daughter lay very ill, and that he would not leave her while she was suffering or in danger. Mr. Cooper, therefore, immediately moved for his default. Mr. Sacia interposed again for time, but it was denied. A jury was empanelled to assess Mr. Effingham s damages. The trial, of course, was ex-parte, Mr. Weed being absent and defenceless. Cooper s lawyer made a wordy, windy, abusive appeal for exemplary damages. The jury retired, under a strong charge against Mr. Weed from Judge Willard, and after remaining in their room till twelve o clock at night, sealed a verdict for $400 for Mr. Effingham, which was delivered to the Court this morning. " This meager verdict, under the circumstances, is a severe and mortify ing rebuke to Cooper, who had everything his own way. "The value of Mr. Cooper s character, therefore, has been judicially ascertained. " It is worth exactly four hundred dollars. " Col. Webb s trial comes on this afternoon ; his counsel, A. L. Jordan, Esq., having just arrived in the up train. Cooper will be blown sky high. This experiment upon the Editor of The Courier and Enquirer, I predict, will cure the handsome Mr. Effingham of his monomania for libels." It was not revealed until long afterwards that Mr. Weed wrote the letter, but for its publication in The Tribune Mr. Cooper forthwith brought an action of libel against Messrs. Greeley and McElrath. The cause came on to be tried at Ballston, Saratoga county, in December, 1842. Because he judged that there were a number of matters in the law of libel which appealed more directly and forcibly to the experience of Editors than of Lawyers, Mr. Greeley appeared as his own counsel in the case. He gave a full, somewhat humourous report of the trial in The Tribune, from which we make full extracts : " The case was opened to the Court and Jury by Richard Cooper, nephew and attorney of the plaintiff, in a speech of decided pertinence and force. * * * Mr. R. Cooper has had much experience in this class of cases, and is a young man of considerable talent. His manner is the only fault about him, being too elaborate and pompous, and his diction too bom bastic to produce the best effect on an unsophisticated auditory. If he will only contrive to correct this, he will yet make a figure at the Bar or rather, he will make less figure and do more execution. The force of his speech was marred by Fenimore s continually interrupting to dictate and THE FENTMORE COOPER LIBEL-SUITS. 135 suggest to him ideas when he would have done much better if left alone. For instance: Fenimore instructed him to say, that our letter from Fonda above recited purported to be from the correspondent of The Tribune, and thence to draw and press on the Jury the inference that the letter was written by some of our own corps, whom we had sent to Fonda to report these trials. This inference we were obliged to repel in our reply, by showing that the article plainly read correspondence of The Tribune," just as when a fire, a storm, or some other notable event occurs in any part of the country or world, and a friend who happens to be there, sits down and despatches us a letter by the first mail to give us early advices, though he has no connection with us but by subscription and good will, and perhaps never wrote a line to us in his life till now. ********** * ** "The next step in Mr. R. Cooper s opening: We had, to the declaration against us, pleaded the General Issue that is Not Guilty of libelling Mr. Cooper, at the same time fully admitting that we had published all that he called our libels on him, and desiring to put in issue only the fact of their being or not being libels, and have the verdict turn on that issue. But Mr. Cooper told the Jury (and we found, to our cost, that this was New York Supreme and Circuit Court law) that by pleadiny Not Guilty we had legally admitted ourselves to be Guilty that all that was necessary for the plaintiff under that plea was to put in our admission of publication, and then the Jury had nothing to do but to assess the plaintiff s damages under the direction of the Court. In short, we were made to understand that there was no way under Heaven we beg pardon : under New York Supreme Court LaAv in which the editor of a newspaper could plead to an action for libel that the matter charged upon him as libelous was not in its nature or intent a libel, but simply a statement, according to the best of his knowledge and belief, of some notorious and every way public transaction, or his own honest comments thereon : and ask the Jury to decide whether the plaintiffs averment or his answers thereto be the truth! To illustrate the beauties of the perfection of human reason always intending New York Circuit and Supreme Court reason on this subject, and to show the perfect soundness and pertinence of Mr. Cooper s logic according to the decisions of these Courts, we will give an example. "Our police reporter, say this evening, shall bring in on his chronicle of daily occurrences the following : " A hatchet-faced chap, with mouse-coloured whiskers, who gave the name of John Smith, was brought in by a watchman who found him lying drunk in the gutter. After a suitable admonition from the Justice, and on payment of the usual fine, he was discharged. " Now, our reporter, who, no more than we, ever before heard of this John Smith, is only ambitious to do his duty correctly and thoroughly, to make his description accurate and graphic, and perhaps to protect better men who rejoice in the cognomen of John Smith, from being confounded with this one in the popular rumour of his misadventure. If the paragraph should come under our notice, we should probably strike it out altogether, 136 IJFE OF HORACE GREELEY. as relating to a subject of no public moment, and likely to crowd out better matter. But we do not see it, and in it goes : Well : John Smith, who acknowledges the corn as to being accidentally drunk and getting into the watch-house, is not willing to rest under the imputation of being hatchet-faced and having mouse-coloured whiskers, retains Mr. Richard Cooper for he could not do better and commences an action for libel against us. We take the best legal advice, and are told that we must demur to the Declaration that is, go before a court without jury, where no facts can be shown, and maintain that the matter charged as uttered by us is not libelous. But Mr. R. Cooper meets us there and says justly: How is the court to decide without evidence that this matter is not libel ous? If it was written and inserted for the express purpose of ridiculing and bringing into contempt my client, it clearly is libelous. And then as to damages: My client is neither rich nor a great man, but his character, in his own circle, is both dear and valuable to him. We shall be able to show on trial that he was on the point of contracting marriage with the daughter of the keeper of the most fashionable and lucrative oyster-cellar in Orange street, whose nerves were so shocked at the idea of her intended having a hatchet face and mouse-coloured whiskers, that she fainted out right on reading the paragraph (copied from your paper into the next day s Sun), and was not brought to until a whole bucket of oysters which she had just opened had been poured over her in a hurried mistake for water. Since then, she has frequent relapses and shuddering, especially when my client s name is mentioned, and utterly refuses to see or speak of him. The match is dead broke, and my client loses thereby a capital home, where victuals are more plentiful and the supply more steady than it has been his fortune to find them for the last year or two. He loses, with all this, a prospective interest in the concern, and is left utterly with out business or means of support except this suit. Besides, how can you tell, in the absence of all testimony, that the editor was not paid to insert this villianous description of my client, by some envious rival for the affections of the oyster-maid, who calculates both to gratify his spite and advance his lately hopeless wooing V In that case, it certainly is a libel. We affirm this to be the case, and you are bound to presume that it is. The demurrer must be overruled. And so it must be. No judge could decide otherwise. " Now we are thrown back upon a dilemma : Either we must plead Justification, in which case we admit tJutt our publication was on its face a libel; and now, woe to us if we cannot prove Mr. Cooper s client s face as sharp, and his whiskers of the precise colour as stated. A shade more or less ruins us. For, be it known, by attempting a Justification we have not merely admitted our offense to be a libel, but our plsa is an aggravation of the libel, and entitles the plaintiff to recover higher and more examplary damages. But we have just one chance more: to plead the general issue to-wit, that we did not libel the said John Smith, and go into court pre pared to show that we had no malice toward or intent to injure Mr. Smith, never heard of him before, and have done all we know how to make hiir. THE FENIMORE COOPER LIBEL-SUITS. reparation in short, that we have done and intended nothing which brings us fairly within the iron grasp of the law of libel. But here again, while trying our best to get in somehow a plea of Not Guilty, we have actually pleaded Guilty! so says the Supreme Court law of New York our admitted publication (no matter of what) concerning John Smith proves irresistibly that we have libelled him we are not entitled in any way whatever to go to the Jury with evidence tending to show that our publication is not a libel or, in overthrow of the legal presumption of malice, to show that there actually was none. All that we possibly can offer must be taken into account merely in mitigation of damages. Our hide is on the fence, you see, any how. "But to return to Richard s argument at Ballston. He put very strongly against us the fact that our Fonda correspondent (see Declaration above) considered Fenimore s verdict there a meager one. Gentlemen of the jury, said he, see how these editors rejoice and exult when they get oft with so light a verdict as $400 ! They consider it a triumph over the law and the defendant. They don t consider that amount anything. If you mean to vindicate the laws and the character of my client, you sec you must give much more than this. This was a good point, but not quite fair. The exultation over the meager verdict was expressly in view of the fact that the cause was undefended that Fenimore and his counsel had it all their own way, evidence, argument, charge, and all. Still, Richard had a good chance here to appeal for a large verdict, and he did it well " On one other point Richard talked more like a cheap lawyer and less like a like what w r e had expected of him than through the general course of his argument. In his pleadings, he had set forth Horace Greeleyand Thomas McElrath as Editors and Proprietors of The Tribune, and we readily enough admitted whatever he chose to assert about us except the essential thing in dispute between us. Well, on the strength of this he puts it to the Court and Jury, that Thomas McElrath is one of the Editors of The Tribune, and that he, being (having been) a lawyer, would have been in Court to defend this suit, if there was any valid defense to be made. This, of course, went very hard against us; and it was to no purpose that we informed him that Thomas McElrath, though legally implicated in it, had nothing to do practically with this matter (all which he knew very well long before) and that the other defendant is the man who does whatever libelling is done in The Tribune, and holds himself everywhere responsible for it. We presume there is not much doubt even so far off as Cooperstown as to who edits The Tribune, and who wrote the editorial about the Fonda business. (In point of fact, the real and palpable defendant in this suit never even conversed with his partner a quarter of an hour altogether about this subject, considering it entirely his own job; and the plaintiff himself, in conversation with Mr. McElrath, in the presence of his attorney, had fully exonerated Mr. M. from anything more than legal liability.) But Richard was on his legs as a lawyer he pointed to the seal on his bond and therefore insisted that Thomas McElrath was art and part in the alleged libel, not only legally, 138 LIFE OF HOKACE GKEKI.KY. but actually, and would have been present to respond to it if he had deemed it susceptible of defense! As a lawyer, we suppose this was right; but, as an Editor and a man, we could not have done it." Mr. Greeley followed the younger Cooper in a speech which would have done credit to an experienced lawyer. " Gentle men of the Jury," he concluded, " my character, my reputation are in your hands. I think I may say that I commit them to your keeping untarnished; I will not doubt that you will return them to me unsullied. I ask of you no mercy, but justice. I have not sought this issue; but neither have I feared nor shunned it. Should you render the verdict against me, I shall deplore far more than any pecuniary consequence the stigma of libeller which your verdict would tend to cast upon me an imputation which I was never, till now, called to repel before a jury of my countrymen. But gentlemen, feeling no consciousness of deserving such a stigma, feeling at this moment, as ever, a profound conviction that I do not deserve it, I shall yet be consoled by the reflection that many nobler and worthier than I have suffered far more than any judgment here could inflict on me for the rights of free speech and opinion the right of rebuking oppression and meanness in the language of manly sincerity and honest feeling. By their example, may I still be upheld and strengthened. Gentlemen, I fearlessly await your decision." It is clear from this that he supposed the verdict would be against him. He proceeds with his report of the trial: " Mr. J. Fenimore Cooper summed up in person the cause for the prose cution. He commenced by giving at length the reasons which had induced him to bring this suit in Saratoga.^ The last and only one that made any impression on our mind was this, that he had heard a great deal of good of the people of Saratoga, and wished to form a better acquaintance with them. (Of course this desire was very flattering ; but we hope the Sarato- gans won t feel too proud to speak to common folks hereafter, for we want liberty to go there again next summer.) Mr. Cooper now walked into the Public Press and its alleged abuses, arrogant pretensions, its interference in this case, probable motives, etc., but the public are already aware of his sentiments respecting the Press, and would not thank us to recapitulate them. His stories of editors pub lishing truth and falsehood with equal relish may have foundation in individual cases v but certainly none in general practice. Xo class of men THE FENIMORE COOPER LIBEL-SUITS. 139 spend a tenth part so much time or money in endeavouring to procure the earliest and best information from all quarters, as it is their duty to do. Occasionally an erroneous or utterly false statement gets into print and is copied for editors cannot intuitively separate all truth from falsehood but the evil arises mainly from the circumstance that others than editors are often the spectators of events demanding publicity; since we cannot tell where the next man is to be killed, or the next storm rage, or the next important cause to be tried : if we had the power of prophecy, it would then be time to invent some steam-lightning balloon, and have a reporter ready on the spot the moment before any notable event should occur. This would do it ; but now we luckless editors must too often depend on the observation and reports of those who are less observant, less careful, possibly in some cases less sagacious, than those of our own tribe. Our limitations are not unlike those of Mr. Weller, Junior, as stated while under cross-examination in the case of Bardell t). Pickwick: " Yes, I have eyes, replied Sam, and that s just it. If they was a pair of patent double million magnifyin gas microscopes of hextra power, p raps I might be able to see through a flight of stairs and a deal door, but bein only eyes, you see, my wision s limited. " Fenimore proceeded to consider our defense, which he used up in five minutes, by pronouncing it no defence at all ! It had nothing to do with the matter in issue whatever, and we must be very green if we meant to be serious in offering it. ("We were rather green in Supreme Court libel law, that s a fact ; but we were put to school soon after, and have already run up quite a little bill for tuition, which is one sign of progress.) His Honour the Judge would tell the Jury that our law was no law whatever, or had nothing to do with this case. (So he did Cooper was right here.) In short, our speech could not have been meant to apply to this case, but was probably the scrapings of our editorial closet mere odds and ends what the editors call Balaam. Here followed a historical digression, concerning what editors call Balaam, which, as it was intended to illus trate the irrelevancy of our whole argument, we thought very pertinent. It wound up with what was meant for a joke about Balaam and his ass, which of course was a good thing ; but its point wholly escaped us, and we believe the auditors were equally unfortunate. However, the wag himself appreciated and enjoyed it. " There were several other jokes (we suppose they were) uttered in the course of this lively speech, but we didn t get into their merits (probably not being in the best humor for joking); but one we remembered because it was really good, and came down to our comprehension. Fenimore was replying to our remarks about the handsome Mr. Effingham (see speech), when he observed that if we shvuld sue him for libel in pronouncing us not handsome, he should not plead the General Issue, but Justify. That was a neat hit, and well planted. We can tell him, however, that if the Court should rule as hard against him as it does against editors when they undertake to justify, he would find it difficult to get in the testimony to establish a matter even so plain as our plainness. 140 LIEE OF HORACE GREELEY. " Fenimore now took up the Fonda libel suit, and fought the whole bat tle over again, from beginning to end. Now we had scarcely touched on this, supposing that, since we did not justify, we could only refer to the statements contained in the publications put in issue between us, and that the Judge would check us, if we went beyond these. Fenimore, however, had no trouble; said whatever he pleased much of which would have been very pertinent if he, instead of we, had been on trial showed that he did not believe anything of Mr. Weed s family being sick at the time of the Fonda Trials, why he did not, &c., &c. We thought he might have reserved all this till we got down to dinner, which everybody was now hungry for, and where it would have been more in place than addressed to the Jury. " Knowing what we positively did and do of the severe illness of the wife of Mr. W T eed, and the dangerous state of his eldest daughter at the time of the Fonda Trials in question regarding them as we do the jokes attempted to be cut b\- Fenimore over their condition his talk of the story growing up from one girl to the mother and three or four daughters his fun about their probably having the Asiatic cholera among them or some other contagious disease, &c., &c., however it may have sounded to others, did seem to us rather inhu Hallo there ! we had like to have put our foot right into it again, after all our tuition. We mean to say, consid ering that, just the day before, Mr. Weed had been choked by his counsel into surrendering at discretion to Fenimore, being assured (correctly) by said counsel that, as the law is now expounded and administered by the Supreme Court, he had no earthly choice but to bow his neck to the yoke, pay all that might be claimed of him and publish whatever humiliations should be required, or else prepare to be immediately ruined by the suits which Fenimore and Richard had already commenced or were getting ready for him considering all this, and how much Mr. Weed has paid and must pay towards his subsistence how keenly W. has had to smart for speaking his mind of him we did not think that Feniniore s talk at this time and place of Weed s family, and of Weed himself as a man so paltry that he would pretend sickness in his family as an excuse to keep away from Court, and resort to trick after trick to put off his case for a day or two it seemed to us, considering the present relation of the parties, most ungen There we go again"! We mean to say that the whole of this part of Mr. Cooper s speech grated upon our feelings rather harshly. We believe that isn t a libel. (This talking with a gag in the mouth is rather awkw r ard at first, but we ll get the hang of it in time. Have patience with us, Fenimore on one side and the Public on the other, till we nick it.) ********* "Personally, Fenimore treated us pretty well on this trial let us thank him for that and so much the more that he did it quite at the expense of his consistency and his logic. For, after stating plumply that he con. sidered us the best of the whole Press-gang he had been fighting with, he yet went on to argue that all we had done and attempted with the intent of rendering him strict justice, had been in aggravation of our original THE FIvMMORE COOPER LIBEL- SUITS. 141 trespass! Yes, there he stood, saying one moment that we were, on the whole, rather a clever fellow, and every other arguing that we had done nothing but to injure him wantonly and maliciously at first, and then all in our power to aggravate that injury! (What a set the rest of us must be!) "And here is where he hit us hard for the first time. He had talked over an hour without gaining, as we could perceive, an inch of ground. When his compliment was put in, we supposed he was going on to say he was satisfied with our explanation of the matter and our intentions to do him justice, and would now throw up the case. But instead of this he took a sheer the other way, and came down upon us with the assertion that our publishing his statement of the Fonda business with our com ments, was an aggravation of our original offence- 1 was in efl ect adding insult to injury! ********* "There was a little point made by the prosecution which seemed to us too little. Our Fonda letter had averred that Cooper had three libel-suits coming off there at that Circuit two against Webb, one against Weed. Richard and Fenimore argued that this was a lie the one against Weed was all. The nicety of the distinction here taken will be appreciated when we explain that the suits against Webb were indictments for libels on J. Feni- raore Cooper! " We supposed that Fenimore would pile up the law against us^ but were dissappoiuted. He merely cited the last case decided against an Editor by the Supreme Court of this State. Of course, it was very fierce against Editors and their libels, but did not strike us as at all meeting the issue we had raised, or covering the grounds on which this case ought to have been decided. " Fenimore closed very effectively with an appeal for his character, and a picture of the sufferings of his wife and family his grown-up daughters often suffused in tears by these attacks on their father. Some said this was mawkish, but we consider it good, and think it told. We have a dif ferent theory as to what the girls were crying for, but we won t state it lest another dose of Supreme Court law be administered to us. (Not any more at present, I thank ye.) "Fenimore closed something before two o clock, having spoken over an hour and a half. If he had not wasted so much time in promising to make but a short speech and to close directly, he could have got through consid erably sooner. Then he did wrong to Richard by continually recurring to and fulsome eulogiums on the argument of my learned kinsman.- Richard had made a good speech and an effective one no mistake about it and Fenimore must mar it first by needless, provoking interruptions, and then by praises which, though deserved, were horribly out of place and out of taste. Fenimore, my friend, you and I had better abandon the Bar we are not likely either of us to cut much of a figure there. Let us quit before we make ourselves ridiculous. " His Honour Judge Willard occupied a brief half hour in charging the 14:2 LIFE OF HOKACE GREELEY. Jury. We could not decently appear occupied in taking down this Charge, and no one else did it so we must speak of it with great circumspection. That he would go dead against us on the Law of the case we knew right well, from his decisions and charges on similar trials before. Not having his Law points before us, we shall not venture to speak of them. Suffice it to say, that they were New York Supreme and Circuit Court Law no better and no worse than he h.\s measured off to several editorial culprits before us. They are the settled maxims of the Supreme Court of this State in regard to the law of libel as applied to Editors and Newspapers, and we must have been a goose to expect any better than had been served out to our betters. The Judge was hardly, if at all, at liberty to know or tolerate any other. ********* " But we have filled our paper, and must close. The Judge charged very hard against us on the facts of the case, as calling for a pretty sizable verdict our legal guilt had of course been settled long before in the Supreme Court. " When the Charge commenced, we would not have given Fenimore the first red cent for his verdict; when it closed, we understood that we were booked to suffer some. If the Jury had returned a verdict in our favour, the Judge must have been constrained by his charge to set it aside, as contrary to law. The Jury retired about half-past two, and the rest of us went to dinner. The Jury were hungry too, and did not stay out long. On comparing notes, there were seven of them for a verdict of $100, two for $200, and three for $500. They added these sums up total $2,600 divided by 12, and the dividend was a little over $200; so they called it $200 damages and six cents costs, which of course carries full costs against us. We went back from dinner, took the verdict in all meekness, took a sleigh, and struck a bee-line for New- York. "Thus for The Tribune the rub-a-dub is over; the adze we trust laid aside; the staves all in their places; the hoops tightly driven; and the heading not particularly out of order. Nothing remains but to pay piper, or cooper, or whatever; and that shall be promptly attended to. " Yes, Fenimore shall have his $200. To be sure, we don t exactly see how we came to owe him that sum ; but he has won it, and shall be paid. The court awards it, and the law doth give it. We should like to meet him and have a social chat over the whole business, now it is over. There has been a good deal of fun in it, come to look back ; and if he has as little ill will toward us as we bear to him, there shall never be another hard thought between us. We don t blame him a bit for the whole matter; he thought we injured him, sued us, and got his pay. Since the Jury have cut down his little bill from $3,000 to $200, we won t higgle a bit about the balance, but pay it on sight. In fact, we rather like the idea of being so munificent a patron (for our means) of American Literature; and are glad to do anything for one of the most creditable (of old) of our authors, who are now generally reduced to any shift for a living by that grand National THE FENIMOKE COOJ EK LIBEL-SUITS. rascality and greater folly, the denial of International Copyright. ( My pensive public, don t flatter yourself that we are to be rendered mealy- mouthed toward you by our buffeting. We shall put it to your iniquities just as straight as a loon s leg, calling a spade a spade, and not an oblong garden implement, until the judicial construction of the law of libel shall take another hitch, and its penalties be invoked to shield communities as well as individuals from censure for their transgressions. Till then, keep a bright look out !) "And Richard, too, shall have his share of the .spoils of victory. He has earned them fairly, and, in the main, like a gentleman making us no needless trouble, and we presume no needless expense. All was fair and above board, save some little specks in his opening of the case, which we noticed some hours ago, and have long since forgiven. For the rest, we rather like what we have seen of him; and if anybody has any law busi ness in Otsego, or any libel suits to prosecute anywhere, we heartily recommend Richard to do the work, warranting the client to be hand somely taken in and done for throughout. (There s a puff, now. a man may be proud of. We don t give such every day out of pure kindness. It was Fenimore, we believe, that said on the trial, that our word went a great way in this country.) Can we say a good word for you, gallant foeman? We ll praise any tiling of yours we have read except the Monikins. " But sadder thoughts rush in on us in closing. Our case is well enough, or of no moment; but we cannot resist the conviction that by the result of these Cooper libel-suits, and by the Judicial constructions which pro duce that result, the Liberty of the Press its proper influence and respectability, its power to rebuke wrong and to exert a salutary influence upon the Public Morals in fearfully impaired. We do not see how any paper can exist, and speak and act worthily and usefully in this State, without subjecting itself daily to innumerable, unjust, and crushing prosecutions and indictments for libel. Even if Juries could have nerves of iron to say and do what they really think right between man and man, the costs of s-uch prosecution would ruin any journal. But the Liberty of the Press has often been compelled to appeal from the bench to the people. It will do so now, and we will not doubt with success. Let not, then, the wrong-doer who is cunning enough to keep the blind side of the law, the swindling banker who has spirited away the means of the widow and orphan, the libertine who has dragged a fresh victim to his lair, imagine that they are permanently shielded, by this misapplication of the law of libel, from fearless exposure to public scrutiny and indignation by the eagle gaze of an unfettered Press. Clouds and darkness may for the moment rest upon it, but they cannot in the nature of things, endure. In the very gloom of its present humiliation we read the prediction of its speedy and certain restoration to its rights and its true dignity to a sphere not of legal sufferance merely, but of admitted usefulness and honour." LIKK OF HORACE GRKKLKY. After the trial, Mr. Greeley proceeded immediately to New- York and wrote the account of it from which the foregoing extracts have been made. He also wrote other matter for the same number of The Tribune. The report alone filled eleven columns of the paper, making more reading matter than is contained in any fifty pages of Bancroft s History of the United States. " I think," said Mr. Greeley in 1868, " that was the best single day s work I ever did." Mr. Cooper, who appears to have had a mania for libel suits, brought another action against Mr. Greeley for several alleged libels in his report, but the skill of his lawyers William H. Seward aud A. B. Conger and his own humourous articles drove the novelist out of court. The cause never came to trial. But Mr. Cooper never came to have any great respect for the public press. " Ubi dolor, ibi digitas, one must needs scratch where it itches." drolly says the author of " The Anatomy of Melancholy." Mr. Greeley, in his .Recollections, speaks of certain libel suits which Mr. Weed had brought against sundry editors for gross assaults upon him, which were finally dropped out of court as too ancient and fishlike to receive attention; and remarks : This was probably the best disposition for him that could have been made of them. If he had tried them, and recovered nominal verdicts, his enemies would have shouted over those verdicts as virtually establishing the truth of their charges; while, if he had been awarded exemplary damages, these would have been cited as measuring the damages to be given against him in each of the hundred libel-suits thereafter brought against him. This consideration was forcibly brought home to me when, years afterward, having been outrageously libelled with regard to a sum of $1,000, which it was broadly intimated that a railroad or canal com pany in Iowa had given me for services rendered, or to be rendered, I ordered suits commenced against two of the most reckless libellers. But. when time had been allowed for reflection, I perceived that I could afford neither to lose nor to win these suits; that such verdicts as I ought to recover would be cited as measuring the damages that I ought to pay in all future libel-suits brought against me; so I gladly accepted such retrac tions as my libellers saw fit to make, and discontinued my suits. Hence forth, that man must very badly want to be sued who provokes me to sue him for libel. s 1 Page 265. LIBELS. 145 The law of libel in New York was amended, to some extent in the interest of the freedom of the press, in consequence of the many suits instigated by Mr. Cooper and by black-mailing lawyers; but there, as elsewhere, it is still susceptible of great improvement, in the interest both of the people and of justice. Mr. Greeley, in the work from which we have just read an extract, concludes his account of his connexion with libel-suits with interesting biographical facts and a wise practical sug gestion. He says: Twice, in the course of my thirty-odd years of editorship, I have encountered human beings base enough to require me to correct a dam aging statement, and after I had done so to the extent of their desire, to sue me upon that retracted statement as a libel ! I think this proves more than the depravity of the persons implicated, that it indicates a glaring defect in the law or the ruling under which such a manoauvre is possible. If the law were honest, or merely decent, it would refuse to be made an accomplice of such villainy. Ere many years, I hope to see all the reputable journals of this city, if not of the entire State, unite in an association for mutual defence against vexatious and unreasonable libel-suits. They ought to do this; employing a capable and painstaking lawyer, to whom every suit for libel against any member of the association should at once be referred, with instruc tions to investigate it candidly, and decide whether its defence ought or ought not to devolve on the press generally. If not, let it be remitted to the counsel for the journal prosecuted; but, if the prosecution be clearly unreasonable and vexatious, a lawyer s dodge to levy black-mail, then let no money or effort be spared to baffle and defeat the nefarious attempt. Such a combination for mutual defence would arrest the prevailing habit of paying $50 or $100 to buy off the plaintiff s attorney as the cheapest way out of a bother, would soon greatly reduce the number of suits for libel, and would result in a substantial and permanent enlargement of the Freedom of the Press. It should have been formed long ago 3 1 Page 267. CHAPTEK IX. SOCIALISM AND OTHER " ISMS." Mr. Greeley s Socialism His Mature Views as Set Forth by Himself The Famous Discussion With Mr. Raymond The Effect of Mr. Greeley s Supposed Opinions Upon New -York Journalism Estab lishment of The Times " Grahamism " Spiritualism .Tenny Lind Attends "the Rapping?" at Mr. Greeley s House Summing up of His " Isms." MOST young men of generous dispositions who are led seriously to reflect upon the past progress and present situa tion of mankind, take a tilt against society as it is organized. It is perhaps true that a majority of such men are, for a longer or shorter period of their lives according to circumstances, sincere, earnest enemies of the existing state of things. Men who have become poets of world-wide renown, others who have largely contributed to thought, philosophy, science, statesmanship, were in the fresh flush of their manhood social ists " of the most straightest sect," unquestioned " destruc tives," "agrarians," and the rest of those horrid things, in youth; staid conservatives and even adulatory poets-laureate when they reached that part of their lives -when the sere and yellow leaves of age sadly rustled along their prosperous pathway. The plan by which to extirpate poverty, vice, crime, which has been adopted at least in theory by more men than is commonly supposed, from the establishment of the first Christian Church down to the present time is socialism. With thousands of pure men this has been a delightful dream; a magnificent mirage, with beautiful structures built of the viewless air on the shifting sands of desert waste. It was natural and logical that Horace Greeley, a most generous nature, one hating all forms and manifestations of injustice, a born Reformer, should look with approbation upon i scheme, which claimed to be able to drive poverty and vice (148) SOCIALISM. 147 and misery from the land, and build up a community of pros perous, virtuous citizens. Moreover, lie had a strong natural repugnance last infirmity of noble mind to receiving any person s or any number of persons ideas upon trust. He had very little respect for authority, as such. This is always the case with men whose fixed, unselfish purpose is to leave the world better for their having lived in it. He was a lover of fair play, and ever insisted on giving men a chance to publish their views, if there were a possibility of any good coming from them. He became a Socialist. The fact was of grave import in his life. It subjected him to a vast deal of harsh criticism, ridicule, and misrepresentation. I deem it but simple justice, therefore, that his mature views upon this sub ject, as set forth by himself years after the fierce newspaper conflicts to which they gave rise, should be here incorporated in- extenso in his own words. Thus will men be able right eously to approve or condemn, as may seem to them reasonable and just. Besides, those who condemn in advance, thus have the opportunity afforded them of skipping the few following pages, of complacently nursing their wisdom to keep it warm, and then going on with the rest of us in our biographical journey. Mr. Greeley thus relates at length how he became a Socialist, :ind just what his Socialism was: " The Winter of 1837-38, though happily mild and open till far into January, was one of pervading destitution and suffering in our city, from paralysis of business and consequent dearth of employment. The liberality of those who could and would give was heavily taxed to save from famishing the tens of thousands who, being needy and unable to find employment, first ran into debt so far as they could, and thenceforth must be helped or starve. For, in addition to all who may be said to belong here, legions of labourers, servants, etc., are annually dismissed in Au tumn from the farms, country-seats, and watering-places of the suburban districts, and drift down to the city, whence they were mainly hired ; vaguely hoping to find work here, which a small part of them do: the rest live on the good-nature of relatives, if such they have here, or on credit from boarding-houses, landlords, or grocers, so long as they can; and then make their choice between roguery and beggary, or change from this to that, or take them mixed, as chance may dictate. Since the general diffusion of railroads and the considerable extension of our manufacturing industry, business is far more equable than it was, even in J4-0 LIFE OF HORACE G REFLET. prosperous times, thirty years ago; but Winter is still a season of priva tion and suffering to many thousands who live in tolerable comfort through the warmer seasons. To say that ten thousand young persons here annually take their first lessons in debauchery and crime would be to keep quite within the truth; and, while passion, ignorance, and miseducation ruin their thousands, I judge that destitution flowing from involuntary idleness sends more men and women to perdition, in this city, than any other cause, intemperance possibly excepted. " I lived that Winter in the Sixth Ward, then, as now, eminent for filth, squalour, rags, dissipation, want, and misery. A public meeting of its citizens was duly held early in December, and an organization formed thereat, by which committees were appointed to canvass the Ward, from house to house, collect funds from those who could and would spare anything, ascertain the nature and extent of the existing destitution, and devise ways and means for its systematic relief. Veiy poor myself, I could give no money, or but a mite ; so I gave time instead, and served, through several days, on one of the visiting committees. I thus saw extreme destitution more closely than I had ever before observed it, and was enabled to scan its repulsive features intelligently. I saw two families, including six or eight children, burrowing in one cellar under a stable, a prey to famine on the one hand, and to vermin and cutaneous maladies on the other, with sickness adding its horrors to those of a polluted atmosphere and a wintry temperature. I saw men who each> somehow, supported his family on an income of $5 per week or less, yet who cheerfully gave something to mitigate the sufferings of those who were really poor. I saw three widows, with as many children, living in an attic on the profits of an apple-stand which yielded less than $3 per week, and the landlord came in for a full third of that. But worst to bear of all was the pitiful plea of stout, resolute, single young men and young women : We do not want alms ; we are not beggars ; we hate to sit here day by day idle and useless ; help us to work, we want no other help ; why is it that we can have nothing to do ? " I pondered these scenes at intervals throughout the next two or three years, and was impelled thereby to write for The New-Yorker I think, in the Winter of 1839-40 a series of articles entitled, What shall be done for the Labourer? I believe these attracted the attention of Mr. Albert Brisbane, a young man of liberal education and varied culture, a native of Batavia, N. Y., which he still regarded as his home, but who had travelled widely and observed thoughtfully; making the acquaintance in Paris of the school of Socialists called (after their founder) St. Simon- ians, and that also of Charles Fourier, the founder of a different school, which had been distinguished by his name. Robert Owen, by his experiments at New Lanark and his New Views of Society, was the first in this century to win public attention to Socialism, though (I believe) Fourier had not only speculated, but written, before either of his co- labourers. But Owen was an extensive and successful manufacturer ; St. Simon was a soldier, and the heir of a noble family; while Fourier was a SOCIALISM. 149 poor clerk, reserved and taciturn, whose hard, dogmatic, algebraic style seemed expressly calculated to discourage readers and repel adherents; so that his disciples were few indeed, down to the date of his death in 1837. Mr. Brisbane, returning not long afterward from Europe, prepared and published his first work which was an exposition and commendation of Fourier s industrial system in 1840. My acquaintance with the author and his work commenced soon afterward. " I sum up these three competing projects of Social Reform as fol lows : " Owen. Place human beings in proper relations, under favouring circumstances (among which I include Education and Intelligence), and thev will do right rather than wrong. Hitherto, the heritage of the great mitjority has been filth, squalour, famine, ignorance, superstition ; and these have impelled many to indolence and vice, if not to crime. Make their external conditions what they should be, and these will give place to industry, sobriety, and virtue. " St. Simon. Love is the fulfilling of the law. Secure to everyone opportunity; let each do whatever he can do best; and the highest good of the whole will be achieved and perpetuated. "Fourier. Society, as we find it, is organized rapacity. Half of its force is spent in repressing or resisting the jealousies and rogueries of its members. We need to organize Universal Justice based on Science. The true Eden lies before, not behind us. We may so provide that Labour, now repulsive, shall be attractive; while its efficiency in production shall be increased by the improvement of machinery and the extended use of natural forces, so as to secure abundance, education, and elegant luxury, to all. What is needed is to provide all with homes, employment, instruc tion, good living, the most effective implements, machinery, etc., securing to each the fair and full recompense of his achievement; and this can best be attained through the association of some four to five hundred families in a common household, and in the ownership and cultivation of a com mon domain, say of 2,000 acres, or about one acre to each person living thereon. "I accept, unreservedly, the views of no man, dead or living. The master has said it, was never conclusive with me. Even though I have found him right nine times, I do not take his tenth proposition on trust; unless that also be proved sound and rational, I reject it. But I am con vinced, after much study and reflection, that the Social Reformers are riglit on many points, even when clearly wrong on others; and I deem Fourier though in many respects erratic, mistaken, visionary the most suggestive and practical among them. I accept nothing on his authority; for I find man}- of his speculations fantastic, erroneous, and (in my view) pernicious; but on many points he commands iny unreserved concur rence. Yet I prefer to set forth my own Social creed rather than his, even wherein mine was borrowed from his teachings ; and mine is, briefly, as follows : " I. I believe that there need be, and should be, no paupers who are not 150 LIFE OF HOltACE GREELEY. infantile, idiotic, or disabled; and that civilized society pays more for the support of able-bodied pauperism than the necessary cost of its extirpa tion. " II. I believe that they babble idly and libel Providence who talk of surplus Labour, or the inadequacy of Capital to supply employment to all who need it. Labour is often most required and best paid where Capital is scarcest (as was shown in California in 1849-50); and there is always even in China far more work than hands, provided the ability to devise and direct be not wanting. Where Labour stands idle, save in the presence of some great public calamity, there is a demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains. " III. I believe that the efficiency of human effort is enormously, ruin ously diminished by what I term Social Anarchy. That is to say : We spend half our energies in building fences and providing safeguards against each other s roguery, while our labour is rendered inefficient and inadequately productive by bad management, imperfect implements, a deficiency of power (animal or steam), and the inability of our producers to command and wield the most effective machinery. It is quite within the truth to estimate the annual product of our National Industry at less than one half what it might be if better applied and directed. " IV. Inefficiency in production is paralleled by waste in consumption. Insects and vermin devour at least one-fourth of the farmer s harvests! which inadequate fertilizing and unskilful cultivation have already reduced far below the proper aggregate. A thousand cooks are required, and a thousand fires maintained, to prepare badly the food of a township ; when a dozen fires and a hundred cooks might do it far better, and with a vast saving in quantity as well as improvement in quality. [I judge that the cooks of Paris would subsist One Million persons on the food consumed or wasted by Six Hundred Thousand in this city; feeding them better than they are now f6d, and prolonging their lives by an average of five years.] "V. Youth should be a season of instruction in Industry and the Useful Arts, as well as in Letters and the Sciences mastered by their aid. Each child should be trained to skill and efficiency in productive Labour. The hours of children should be alternately devoted to Labour, Study, and Recreation, say two hours to 8ach before, and a like allotment after, dinner each secular day. Thus each child would grow up an adept, not merely in letters, but in arts, a skilful worker as well as a proficient in the lessons of the school-room, able to do well, not one thing only, but many things, familiar with mechanical as well as agricultural processes, and acquainted with the use of steam and the direction of machinery. Not till one has achieved the fullest command, the most varied use, of all his faculties and powers, can he be properly said to be educated. "VI. Isolation is at war with efficiency and with progress. As iron sharpeneth iron, so are man s intellectual and inventive faculties stimu lated by contact with his fellow-men. A nation of herdsmen, dwelling in movable tents, invents little or nothing, and makes no progress, or next tc none. Serfdom was the general condition of the labouring class in Europe. SOCIALISM. 151 until aggregation in cities and manufactories, diffusing intelligence, and nourishing aspiration, wrought its downfall. " VII. The poor work at perpetual disadvantage in isolation, because of the inadequacy of their means. Let us suppose that four or five hun dred heads of families propose to embark in Agriculture. Each buys his little farm, his furniture, his implements, animals, seeds, fertilizers, &c., &c., and though he has purchased nothing that he does not urgently need he finds his means utterly exhausted, and his farm and future exer tions heavily burdened by debt. He hopes and labours to clear off the mortgage; but flood and drouth, frost and fire, work against him; his poverty compels him to do without many implements, and to plough or team with inadequate force ; he runs up an account at the store, and pays twenty per cent, extra for his goods, because others, who buy on credit, fail to pay at all ; and so he struggles on, till his strength fails, and he dies oppressed with debt. Such is the common lot. "VIII. Association would have these unite to purchase, inhabit, and cultivate a common domain, say, of two tlunisand acres, whereby these advantages over the isolated system would be realized: " 1. One-fourth (at most) of the land required under the old system would be found abundant. "2. It could be far better allotted and appropriated to Grain, Grass, Fruits, Forest, Garden, &c. "3. The draught animals that were far too few, when dispersed among five hundred owners, on so many different farms, would be amply sufficient for a common domain. "4. Steam or water power could now be economically employed fora hundred purposes cutting and sawing timber, threshing and grinding grain, ploughing the soil, and for many household uses where the small farmer could not think of employing it. " 5. Industry would find new and powerful incentives in the observa tion and praise or censure of the entire community; uniforms, banners, and music, with the rivalry of bands of competing workers, would provoke emulation and lighten labour; while such recreations as dramas, concerts, readings, &c. , now utterly beyond the reach of rural workers, would give a new zest to life. At present our youth escape from rural industry when they can, not that they really hate work, but that they find their leisure hours even duller and less endurable than those they give to rugged toil." It thus appears that Mr. Greeley s " Socialism " was neither Fourierisrn, St. Simonism, Owenism, nor any other " ism," without qualification. If any ism at all, it was Greeleyism as applied to social reform. It was Association; Cooperation; cooperation, not clearly outlined, indeed, but ntill the idea; 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 148, ft seq. 152 LIFE OF HORACE GRKKI.KY. then in helpless infancy, now believed by many of the noblest thinkers and workingmen of the times to embody the plan by which Labour shall be emancipated from oppressive laws, usages, and opinions, and thus confer incalculable benefit upon mankind. Having passed through Horace Greeley s mental crucible, that which was called Socialism became the germ of a great and beneficent reform. But not suddenly. And some may say the proposed reform was as first conceived by him too sweeping in its nature.. They would assert that so late as 1851, they find him, after visiting a " Bagged School " of London, and witnessing the unspeak able wretchedness and degradation of the scholars, exclaiming: " The chief impression made on me by the spectacle here presented was one of intense sadness and self-reproach. I deeply realized that I had hitherto said too little, done too little, dared too little, sacrificed too little, to awaken attention to the infernal wrongs and abuses which are inherent in the very structure and constitution, the nature and essence of civilized Society as it now exists throughout Christendom. Of what avail are alms-giving, and individual benevolence, and even the offices of religion, in the presence of evil so gigantic and so inwoven with the very framework of Society?" Afterwards, when he was in Ireland, he relates this incident: " Walking with a friend through one of the back streets of Gal way, beside the outlet of the lakes. I came where a girl of ten years old was breaking up hard brook pebbles into suitable fragments to mend roads with. We halted, and M. asked her how much she received for that labour. She answered, k six pence a car-load. How long will it take you to break a car load? About a fortnight." A poor child earning for her parents a half-penny a day, and that by hard work, failed t impress Horace Greeley with a favourable opinion of existing institutions. There being very many such poor children at work in the world, he audaciously thought it was right to level things. His socialism was guilty of this charge: it made him "a leveller." It made him entitled to this eulogiurn: he proposed to level up, not down. He did not propose to take riches from the rich: there never was a moment when he advo- SOCIALISM. 153 cated any rapacity of any sort: he did propose to give comforts to the poor, and this by means of Association supplying the place, to a large extent, of capital. He certainly did some times inveigh against organized Society with fierce invective, but with no more intention of tearing society up by the roots than he had of eradicating slavery from America by force of arms when he sustained the Wilmot Proviso in 1848. Out of Mr. Greeley s Socialism, such as it was, u Fourier- isrn " as it was called, grew a discussion with Mr. Raymond, which was famous at the time, and productive, in the end, of results of great importance to both of the eminent disputants. Mr. Brisbane, mentioned above in Mr. Greeley s account of his Socialism, returned from a visit to Europe in the summer of 1846, and at once renewned the agitation of the general subject in a letter to the editors of The Courier and Enquirer, but which was published in The Tribune. To this The Courier and Enquirer replied, and was followed by an editorial rejoinder in The Tribune. After a few more preliminary skirmishes, Mr. Greeley challenged The Courier and Enquirer to a discussion, saying: " As soon as the State election is fairly over say November 10th we will publish an entire article, filling a column of The Tribune, very nearly, in favour of Association as we understand it ; and, upon The Courier copying this and replying, we will give place to its reply, and respond : and so on, till each party shall have, published twelve articles on its own side, and twelve on the other, which shall fulfill the terms of this agree ment. All the twelve articles of each party shall be published without abridgement or variation in the Daily, Weekly, and Semi-weekly editions of both papers. Afterward each party will, of course, be at liberty to comment at pleasure in his own columns. In order that neither paper shall be crowded with this discussi-on, one article p;r week. only, on either side, shall be published, unless The Courier shall prefer greater despatch. Is not this a fair proposition? What says The Courier? It has, of course, the advantage of the defensive position and of the last word." The contest was really between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Ray mond. It began on November 20th, 1846, and closed on the 20th of May following. The debate was conducted with great vigour and liveliness on either side. Mr. Greeley s first article has been thus happily condensed by Mr. Parton: 154 LJFK OF HORACE GREELEY. l> The earth, the air, the waters, the sunshine, with their natural products. were divinely intended and appointed for the sustenance and enjoyment of the whole human family. But the present fact is, that a very large majority of mankind are landless; and, by law, the landless have no inherent right to stand on a single square foot of their native State, except in the highways. Perishing with cold, they have no legal right to a stick of decaying fuel in the most unfreqiiented morass. Famishing, they have no legal right to pluck and eat the bitterest acorn in the depths of the remotest forest. But the Past cannot be recalled. What has been done, has been done. The legal rights of individuals must be held sacred. But those whom society has divested of their natural right to a share in the soil, are entitled to Compensation, i. e., to continuous opportunity to earn a subsistence by Labour. To own land is to possess this opportunity. The majority own no land. Therefore the minority, who own legally all the land, which naturally belongs to all men alike, are bound to secure to the landless majority a compensating security of remunerating Labour. But, as society is now organized, this is not, and cannot be, done. Work, work! give us something to do! anything that will secure us honest bread, is at this moment the prayer of not less than thirty thousand human beings within the sound of the City-Hall bell. Here is an enor mous waste and loss. We must devise a remedy, and that remedy, I pro pose to show, is found in Association." To this Mr. Raymond replied in splendid ad captand um style, undertaking to show that, according to Mr. Greeley no man can rightfully own land. Fanny Wright, as he called her, did not more unquestionably assail the right of private property. With admirable skill, he thus placed Mr. Greeley on the defensive, and himself occupied the vantage-ground of general approval among the reading public. Mr. Greeley next came on with some energetic language in reply to -the misrepresentation of his position, and saying, that by Associa tion he meant a Social Order, to take the place of the present Township, to be composed of some hundreds or thousands of persons, united together in interest and industry for the pur pose of securing to each individual, 1, a commodious house; 2, complete and thorough education; 3, a secure subsistence; 4, opportunity to labour; 5, fair wages; 6, agreeable social relations; and, 7, progress in knowledge and skill. Mr. Raymond replied with great skill again, but was forced to admit that the ends desired to be brought about by Mr. Greeley were highly desirable. He denied that Association niscrssiox WITH MK. RAYMOND. 155 would bring about the desired end, and demanded of Mr. Greeley to substantiate its claim. "Give us proof," he urged, " of its efficacy." He also insisted upon knowing in whom the property of the Social Order is to be vested; how labour is to be remunerated ; what share capital is to have in the concern; by what device men are to be induced to work; and how moral offenses are to be dealt with. To this Mr. Greeley responded categorically, that the property of an Association will be vested in those who contributed the capital to establish it, represented by shares of stock. Labour will be remunerated by a fixed proportion of its products, or of its proceeds, if sold. Men will be induced to labour by a knowledge that ite rewards will be a certain and major proportion of the product, which of course will be less or more according to the skill and industry of each individual. Moral offenses will be punished by legal enactment, and they will be rendered unfrequent by plenty and education. Reaching this point in the discussion, we have embraced the outlines of Association as Mr. Greeley understood it. Henceforth he advocated the plan with great fertility of argu ment and force of language, Mr. Raymond combatting with rare adroitness and popular effect. The judgment of the reading public was emphatically in Mr. Raymond s favour; and to such an extent that he persuaded a great many persons that The Tribune was a decidedly mischievous journal. With great adroitness he confounded Fourierism, including free love, with Mr. Greeley s ideas of Association, and charged it upon him that he would not only destroy all property, and individual effort, but Home, personal virtue, and make a horrid wreck and chaos of all vested rights and all things held sacred. Mr. Raymond did not, indeed, pretend that such was any part of Mr. Greeley s object; nor was he able to show that it was a logical result of his plan. But artfully showing from the writings of leading Socialists that their doctrines were immoral as well as destructive of property, and asserting in effect that Mr. Greeley did not improve upon their plan, he brought down upon his antagonist no little odium which clung to him, in the opinion of many, especially the ignorant, till Ota 156 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. his last days. By the general verdict, Mr. Raymond came out of the contest with the laurel of victory; and to this Mr. Greeley himself gracefully yielded acquiescence by henceforth giving Socialism the least possible attention in The Tribune and by saying nothing whatever of Fourier. While candour thus cheerfully awards to Mr. Raymond triumph in a discussion which called forth on either side the strength and stretch of the human understanding in many of its versatile capacities, more, perhaps, than were ever exibited, before or since, in a newspaper controversy; yet it is also but just to affirm that in the results of the discussion both dis putants accomplished great good: Mr. Raymond immediately; Mr. Greeley then, and for the indefinite future. In then showing the gross evils of Fourierism, Mr. Raymond conferred an inestimable benefit upon his countrymen. In then calling public attention to Association, Mr. Greeley did an incalculable service to Labour, to the world s poor people, the good influences of which shall not cease until all mankind shall have been levelled up out of the sloughs of poverty, and vice. and misery, to the enjoyment of plenty, of the sweets of virtue, and all the blessings of genuine Christian civilization. Mr. Greeley took an active part in one or two efforts to give Socialism practical success, notably the "North American Phalanx," but all in which he took especial interest failed to become permanent institutions. He concluded that practical Socialism would always be difficult, though, perhaps, not impossible, wdthout a basis of religious sympathy and reli gious aspiration. One effect of the discussioirwith Mr. Raymond was, undoubt edly, to injure The Tribune in the judgment of a large number of intelligent and influential persons. Mr. Greeley " lost caste." He became the subject of many a vulgar jest on the streets, of much newspaper ridicule; all which neither disturbed nor injured him. But respectable persons in large numbers made up their minds that Mr. Greeley was a dangerous man and The Tribune a mischievous paper. And the continued prevelance of this opinion, it being constantly fostered by the press of the city generally, and by many journals in the country, was SPIRITUALISM. 157 one cause of the establishment of The Times by Mr. Raymond* and of its popular and financial success only a few years afterl the noted discussion. Mr. Raymond took advantage of The Tribune s undeserved unpopularity very much like Mr. Greeley had taken advantage of the then well-earned disreputability of The Herald. Whether Mr. Raymond intended this by the discussion and the manner in which he conducted it, to achieve victory rather than to promote the cause of truth, may never be known. But Mr. Raymond was a born politi cian, as certainly as Horace Greeley was a born philanthropist. Much was also made of Mr. Greeley s alleged "Grahamism." He would not even eat like other people, it was charged, as though one did not have any sort of right to select his own food, w^ith due regard to cleanliness, comfort, economy, and health. It was said that he lived on a " diet of saw-dust," and the opinion got abroad that he was in all respects an outland ish kind of a man, given over to whim-whams and " isms," and utterly regardless of the established ways of Christian, civilized beings! As a matter of fact he never was aGraham- ite, though he was decidedly of opinion that man ought rather eat to live than live to cat. Mrs. Greeley being mistress of the household, and a decided Grahamite, his table was for many years almost painfully plain to visitors accustomed to higher living; but this only showed respect for his wife on the part of Mr. Greeley and no disrespect for roast beef, nor even chops and tomato sauce. Mr. Greeley did not believe in "spiritualism," as it is called, but The Tribune gave space to accounts of the first " knock- ings," and awarded the subject a respectful heariiig. And here was another terrible "ism " charged up against him! As the spiritual phenomena first occurred not long after the dis cussion on Socialism, and a sect of spiritualists quite rapidly grew up, which, whatever of good or evil there was in it, was decidedly unpopular upon the whole, and believed by many to be a new manifestation of infidelity, the simple fair play of The Tribune in giving the subject a hearing and candid treatment was used to Mr. Greeley s disadvantage, and to help make way for The Times. When the Fox family came to Kew-York, in 158 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. 1850, Mr. Greeley called upon them at their hotel, to personally witness their table-rapping performances. He was not much interested, and had no desire for a second " sitting," but Mrs. Greeley, then much interested in all that pertains to the unseen world on account of the recent death of a son of uncommon promise, visited the Foxes, and invited them to spend a week with her at her home. Whilst they were there, Jenny Lind had a " sitting," which is thus described by Mr. Greeley: " Not long after this, I had called on Mademoiselle Jenny Lind, then a new comer among us, and was conversing about the current marvel with the late N. P. Willis, while Mademoiselle Lind was devoting herself more especially to some other callers. Our conversation caught Mademoiselle Lind s ear, and arrested her attention ; so, after making some inquiries, she asked if she could witness the so-called Manifestations. " I answered that she could do so by coming to my house in the heart of the city, as Katy Fox was then staying with us. She assented, and a time was fixed for her call ; at which time she appeared, with a consider able retinue of total strangers. All were soon seated around a table, and the Tappings were soon audible and abundant. Take your hands from under the table! Mademoiselle Jenny called across to me in the tone and manner of an indifferently bold archduchess. What? I asked, not distinctly comprehending her. Take your hands from under the table! she imperiously repeated ; and I now understood that she suspected me of causing, by some legerdemain, the puzzling concussions. I instantly clasped my hands over my head, and there kept them until the sitting closed, as it did very soon. I need hardly add that this made not the smallest difference with the rappings; but I was thoroughly and finally cured of any desire to exhibit or commend them to strangers." Not long afterward Mr. Greeley witnessed what he strongly suspected to be a juggle or trick on the part of a " medium," which gave him, as he says, " a disrelish for the whole busi ness," and he saw very little more of it. There were other things, regarded by the public as delusions, humbugs, or " isms," to which The Tribune gave respectful treatment, and all the errors of which its editor was .supposed to endorse! In religion he was heterodox; he thought society was organized on a system essentially vicious; he drank neither wine nor spirituous liquors; he lived on Graham bread and other plain food; he had even given "the Millerites" room in The Tribune to predict the speedy destruction of the world; "ISMS." 159 he did not condemn spiritualism without a hearing, and never unreservedly; he thought there might be .something in phre nology; he was sure every body ought to have a fair show; he assailed capital punishment, and actually made grim fun of the gallows. A man whose " isms " could be summed up in all these singularities and more must be a dangerous man and his paper a mischievous journal! The fact is, there is no error, no " humbug." which has received the considerate approval of eminent minds, which is not entitled to a candid examination by every one who loves truth for truth s sake. And it is especially the duty of a public journalist, the conductor of a metropolitan newspaper, to look out for new ideas, as well as for new events, and give them careful, honest investigation. They may not be what i claimed for them. Very well; then they can be intelligently condemned. Since many of the now universally recognized truths of science were at first generally condemned as wicked errors, it ill becomes any public journalist to hold fast that which we have as embracing all that is truthful, or all that is valuable. One reason why The New- York Tribune became the most influential of American public journals is to be found in the fact that Horace Greeley refused no cause, no "ism, not evidently immoral, a candid examination. And when we impartially and fully consider the many " isms " to whose claims he gave respectful attention, the few he ever adopted himself, we cannot but be struck with wonder at his catholic spirit, his courage, and his surpassing wisdom as a journalist. CHAPTEK X. FINAL DEFEAT OF HENRY CLAY. The Presidential Campaign of 1844 Henry Clay the Whig Candidate for President Other Candidates "The Clay Tribune" Mr. Greeley s Labours with Tongue and Voice George D. Prentice of the Louisville Journal An Animated Campaign Defeat Mr. Greeley Greatly Dis satisfied with the Result His Opinion of Henry Clay. ME. GKEELEY attended the National Convention of the Whig party which assembled at the city of Baltimore on the 1st of May, 1844. No name was mentioned in connexion with the nomination for the Presidency except that of Henry Clay, of Kentucky, who was nominated amid stirring excitement by acclamation. Mr. Clay was thus for the fifth time presented as a candidate for the most exalted official position in the republic. Twice he had been defeated by the people; twice in national conventions of his own party. But at this time his popularity with the Whigs was at its height. He never had been defeated by them except on the ground of expediency. Horace Greeley himself, whose devoted affection for and hearty admiration of Mr. Clay were greater than were ever called forth by any other public man, and were, perhaps, in some respects undiscriminating, nevertheless opposed his nomina tion, as we have seen, in the Harrisburgh convention of December, 1839, there supporting General Harrison. But in 1844, the situation was entirely different. The desertion of the Whigs by President Tyler, who entered the Executive office on the decease of Harrison, had indeed been of great apparent advantage to the Democratic party, whose successes in the years immediately following the wild campaign of 1840 seemed fully to sustain Mr. Van Buren s appeal " to the sober second thought of the people." But, on the other hand, Mr. Clay had made a series of public addresses in the West which were listened to by vast concourses of people, and had kept (160) "CLAY AND FRELINGHUYSEN." 161 his name and fame prominently before the public though at the time he held no office. One of these meetings was O unquestionably among the greatest public gatherings ever convened on our continent. I refer to the " Dayton (Ohio) Barbecue" of 1842. Many thousands of men still living will recollect this vast multitude of people gathered together from many States, as among the great days of political conflict. No voice could penetrate such a prodigious crowd, but Robert C. Schenck fulmined forth a remarkable introductory address in four words, which, on account of his tremendous exertions, were generally heard : "Fellow-Citizens, Henry Clay!" No name was then so popular. And Mr. Clay undoubtedly grew in popularity with his party friends from this time forth until his defeat in 1844. There was, however, an animated contest in the Convention on the candidate for Vice-President, Theodore Frelinglmysen, of New Jersey, John Davis, of Massachusetts, Millard Fill- more, of New York, and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, being the competitors. Mr. Frelinglmysen was at length nominated. He was a statesman of liberal views, a man of general culture, a most admirable representative of the Chris tian gentleman. About the only objection which delegates raised against Mr. Frelinglmysen was that his preposterous name could not be got into songs! Thev were thinking of u c5 "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." They discovered that they underestimated the versatile genius of the poetasters; for the very next morning after nomination readers of the Whig journals of Baltimore discovered, to the tune of several well known airs, that " the country is rising For Harry Clay and Frelinghuysen." The Democratic National Convention assembled in the same city near the close of May, and after an earnest struggle and with the help of " the two-thirds rule " defeated Mr. Van Buren, nominating James K. Polk, of Tennessee, on the ninth ballot. The distinguished Silas Wright, of New York, was 11 \ti~2 I IFE OF HOEACE GKKEI.EY. nominated for Yice-President, but declining, Mr. George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was selected. But more than eight months before the Whig Convention, the " Liberal Party " had held a convention in the city of Buffalo which had placed James G. Birney, of Michigan, in nomination for the Presidency, and Thomas Morris, of Ohio, for the Vice-Presidency. The platform adopted by this Buffalo Convention was strongly anti-slavery, radical, brave, and wise. Mr. Greeley entered into the campaign of 1844 with even more enthusiasm, if possible, than he had laboured for Gen eral Harrison four years before. In addition to the regular editions of The Tribune he published The Clay Tribune, a campaign journal similar to The Log-Cabin of 1840. It had a very large circulation and great influence. The regular circulation of The Daily Tribune was at this time about 15,000 copies, that of The Weekly Tribune immensely more. So that what with these and the Clay Tribune for the cam paign. Mr. Greeley might well be thought to have had enough to do in the performance of his duties in The Tribune office. Nevertheless, he made many public speeches in behalf of the cause, and undoubtedly gave more hours to the work than any of his fellow-countrymen. He has himself described his labours in the campaign: " I have admired and trusted many, statesmen : I profoundly loved Henry Clay. Though a slaveholder, he was a champion of Gradual Emancipation when Kentucky formed her first State Constitution in his early manhood ; and was openly the same when she came to revise it, half a century later. He was a conservative in the true sense of that much- abused term : satisfied to hold by the present until he could see clearly how to exchange it for the better^; but his was no obstinate, bigoted con servatism, but such as became an intelligent and patriotic American. From his first entrance into Congress, he had been a zealous and effective champion of Internal Improvements, the Protection of Home Industry, a sound and uniform National Currency, those leading features of a com prehensive, beneficent National policy which commanded the fullest assent of my judgment and the best exertions of my voice and pen. I loved him for his generous nature, his gallant bearing, his thrilling eloquence, and his life-long devotion to what I deemed our country s unity, prosperity, and just renown. Hence, from the day of his nomina tion in May to that of his defeat in November, I gave every hour, every effort, every thought, to his election. My wife and then surviving child GEORGE D. PRENTICE. 163 (our third) spent the Summer at a farm-house in a rural township of Massa chusetts, while I gave heart and soul to the canvass. I travelled and spoke much; I wrote, I think, an average of three columns of The Triouue each secular day; and 1 gave the residue of the hours 1 could save from sleep to watching the canvass, and doing whatever I could to render our side of it more effective. Very often, I crept to my lodging near the office at 2 to 3 A. M., with my head so heated by fourteen to six teen hours of incessant reading and writing, that I could only win sleep by means of copious affusions from a shower-bath; and these, while they probably saved me from a dangerous fever, brought out such myriads of boils, that though I did not heed them till after the battle was fought out and lost I was covered by them for the six months ensuing, often fifty or sixty at once, so that I could contrive no position in which to rest, but passed night after night in an easy-chair. And these unwelcome visitors returned to plague me, though less severely, throughout the fol lowing Winter." Perhaps the only journalist in the country who worked during this campaign with an enthusiasm and spirit of self- sacrifice equal to those of Mr. Greeley, was Mr. George D. Prentice, of The Louisville Journal. A New Englander by birth, with instincts opposed to slavery, Mr. Prentice had gone to Kentucky in early manhood and established a journal in the greatest commercial city of the State. A poet of rare genius. a writer of paragraphs which for wit and humour had never been approached, he soon became greatly influential ; and all the sooner, doubtless, in Southern society, because he was a good shot and not a non-combatant. He had written a biogra phy of Henry Clay, and was greatly, devotedly attached to him, personally and politically. He also published a campaign paper, called The Jouisville Journal Extra, which had an immense circulation in many Southern States and the North west. Known to be in Mr. Clay s confidence, Mr. Prentice s journal was regarded by active politicians as an authority, and was constantly consulted by them in all parts of the country. Had Mr. Prentice possessed the newspaper "machinery" had by Mr. Greeley, The Louisville Journal would have been more generally circulated, perhaps, during the campaign of 1844 than The New- York Tribune. As it was, it may safely be said to have originated more of the fun of the campaign than 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, pp. 167-68. 164 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. all the other Whig journals combined. Mr. Greeley being terribly in earnest," could not have had a more powerful ally than he found in Mr. Prentice: who, also, was no less in earnest, no less heartily devoted to cause and chosen leader, and who wrote many grave and powerful articles, which would have received more attention and exerted more influence than they did, had they not been surrounded by a fairly bewildering display of wit, and retorts so lively that they might have split the very sides of coffins. Though Mr. Prentice s " heavy work " was great and in itself of the greatest merit, it was the lighter effervescences of his mind which won the popular attention. Men sometimes forget the sublime heavens in the midst of a display of sizzing pyrotechnics. The campaign of 1844 was only less animated than that of 1840. The " machinery " was substantially the same, differing only in details. There was no end of Clay and Frelinghuysen rhyme, and the old Tippecanoe glee-clubs were revived, and many new ones formed. Log-cabins and hard cider had, in deed, become obsolete, but barbecues, liberty-pole raisings (Whig poles being of ash. Democratic of hickory), processions, and general enthusiasm were common throughout the country. Instead of the log-cabin, the raccoon became the popular em blem of the Whigs. Mr. VanBuren had been dubbed " the sly fox of Kinderhook." Some one, in allusion to Mr. Clay s pre vious candidacies, had spoken of the Whigs as eternally hunting after " that same old coon." And " that same old coon " was taken up by the Whigs very much as the log-cabin had been four years previously. Every procession to a barbecue or mass meeting would have severah wagons in which were elevated small trees, made interesting and lively by the presence of a number of raccoons. It almost seems that if Mr. Clay had been elected, the raccoon would have displaced the eagle in our national escutcheon. The writer of this volume once counted more than twenty raccoons two or three of them white in a single Clay procession. As he had several times gone " coon hunting," without a shadow of success, unless a single opos sum on one occasio may be counted such, he greatly won- DEFEAT OF HENRY CLAY. 165 dered where all the coons came from. The market was brisk during the campaign, but after election prices collapsed. Mr. Clay was defeated, his opponent receiving 170 votes of the electoral college, he receiving 105. This result was ex tremely distasteful to Mr. Greeley. He was not among those who thought Mr. Clay would go through with a hurrah, on account of the fact that Mr. Polk was comparatively unknown. He knew that only restless labour, the best exertions of all working Whigs, and the appliance of every honourable means of influence would secure success. A warmer friend and more unselfish admirer of Mr. Clay than most men, his judgment was not put at fault by his feelings, and he almost ruined his constitution by the work that he imposed upon himself. Years afterwards, he maintained with undoubted sincerity but with questionable correctness, that the victory would have been with Mr. Clay had the friends of Protection liberally expended their money in that behalf, supplying the people with The Tribune and other Whig journals to such extent that all voters might have had an opportunity to read Whig arguments. Mr. Greeley was probably mistaken. A the people defeated Mr. Clay with a gentleman so little known as Mr. Polk was at that time, it seems reasonable to conclude that no earthly power could have induced them to elevate the Kentucky statesman to the chief magistracy. However this may be, it is certain that Mr. Greeley never became reconciled to the result, and lamented it as a public calamity whenever afterwards he spoke of it. Mr. Greeley had a most exalted, perhaps extravagant, opin ion of Henry Clay. He -says of him: " Mr. Clay, born in poverty and obscurity, had not even a common- school education, and had only a few months clerkship in a store, with a somewhat longer training in a law^yer s office, as preparation for his great career. Tall in person, though plain in features, graceful in manner, and at once dignified and affable in bearing, I think his fervid patriotism and thrilling eloquence combined with decided natural abilities and a wide and varied experience to render him the American more fitted to win and enjoy popularity than any other who has lived. That popularity he steadily achieved and extended through the earlier half of his long public life: but he was now confronted by a political combination well-nigh 166 LIFE OB HORACE GREELEY. invincible, based on the potent personal strength of General Jackson ; and this overcame him. Five times presented as a candidate for President, he was always beaten, twice in conventions of his political associates, thrice in the choice of electors by the people. The careless reader of our history in future centuries will scarcely realize the force of his personal magnet ism, nor conceive how millions of hearts glowed with sanguine hopes of his election to the Presidency, and bitterly lamented his and their discom fiture." " In accounting for the defeat of Clay, Mr. Greeley, in after years, attributed it, so far as general causes were concerned, to Mr. Clay s paltering on the question of the annexation of Texas, on the one hand, and to Mr. Folk s paltering, on the question of the Tariff, on the other. These, he thought, were the " great issues " of the campaign. And as Mr. Clay, in his Alabama letters, stated that he did not object to the annexation of Texas on account of slavery, thereby losing the most of the " Liberal " vote of the North, and gaining nothing in the South; and as Mr. Polk, in his " Kane letter," came out in favour of "incidental protection," thus enabling him to beat Mr. Clay in Pennsylvania, though this would defeat such " pro tection " as Pennsylvania desired, the people were misled in regard to either candidate, and that upon the vital issues of the campaign. Herein Mr. Greeley was to a certain extent correct, and it is astonishing that he did not see that Mr. Clay s paltering course was almost infinitely worse than that of Mr. Polk; and this for the reason that the Texas question was almost infinitely more important than the Tariff question, as events have since abundantly shown. Mr. Clay equivocated upon the great question; Mr. Polk upon the little one. The abolitionists saw this with perfect distinctness, and wisely preferred to throw away their votes " upon Mr. Birney rather than more than waste them upon Mr. Clay. The Whigs had not adopted any platform further than a resolution that Whig principles might be summed up as embracing a well regulated national currency ; " a Tariff for revenue to defray the necessary expenses of the government, and discriminating with special reference to the 1 Ibid., p. 168. DEFEAT OF HEKKY CLAY. 167 protection of the domestic labour of the country; " the distri bution of the proceeds from the sales of the public lands; a single term for the Presidency; reform of executive usurpation. It would have been more correct, if the convention had said that Whig principles might be summed up in Henry Clay. The nation was wiser than Mr. Greeley. But he never ceased to lament the defeat of Mr. Clay, or to regard him with an affection and admiration of the most devoted and chivalric nature. We shall see that his friendship remained steadfast to the last. Even so late as when he wrote his " American Conflict," his still enduring love for Clay made him almost excuse the measures generally known as the Compromise of 1850. It would appear to be certain that Mr. Greeley never discovered that slavery had demoralized even the generous, chivalric, " Harry of the West." CHAPTEK XI. CONTINUATION OF TRIBUNE HISTORY. The Tribune and Literature Inaugurates A New Era of Criticism Ed gar A. Poe A High-Priced Autograph The Tribune Brings Out the Transcen dental ists Margaret Fuller; Her Contributions to the Trib une Mr. Greeley s Tribute to Her Genius Notices of American Female Journalists ---Charles Dickens Mr. Greeley s Earl} 7 Recogni tion of his Genius His First Visit to America Washington Irving s "Break Down" at the Dickens Dinner Mr. Dickens s Second Visit Mr. Greeley Presides at the New- York Dinner A Notable Gathering Mr. Greeley s Great Services to Literature Contributions of Tribune Writers to Permanent Literature. THE TRIBUNE was generous, catholic in spirit toward current literature from the day of its establishment. Until it inaugu rated a new era of criticism, exclusively literary journals alone were generally consulted by scholars and thinkers for intelli gence as to books, the arts and sciences, the current labour, in short, of scholars and thinkers. Ponderous quarterly Reviews had for nearly half a century been regarded as guides in all such matters; though monthly magazines, particularly Black- wood s, of Edinburgh, Scotland, while under the editorship of John Wilson,- were not wanting, which discussed literature, science, art, and politics with a brilliancy of criticism and a splendid flow of vituperation not surpassed by the most dash ing daily journalist of the year 1873. Of those journals which were called literary, the one in New-York which attained the largest influence during the early years of The Tribune, was The Weekly Mirror, afterwards The Home Journal, of which the editors were the distinguished poet, N. P. Willis, and the no less distinguished song- writer, George P. Morris. Mr. Greeley became well acquainted with these gentlemen, and other men of letters who contributed to their journal, making it a sort of literary " organ," and authority for " the upper ten," a phrase which is said to have originated with Mr. Willis. I OE S AUTOGU.U H. 169 Among the celebrated literary men with whom "Mr. Greeley became quite intimately acquainted was Edgar A. Poe, author of " The Raven," and other poems of rare beauty and power, a? well as of a number of tales exhibiting remarkable acumen and powers of analysis. Poe was no less brilliant as a conver sationist than he was as a writer, but he was irregular in habits :md careless in business matters. Long after the poet s death. Mr. Greeley received the following letter 1 SIR: In your extensive correspondence, you have undoubtedly secured several autographs of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poe. If so, will yon please favour me with one, and oblige, "Yours, respectfully, A. B." To which Mr. Greeley replied: "DEAR SIR: I happen to have in my possession but one autograph of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poo. It consists of an I. O. U.. with rny name on the back of it. It cost me just $50, and you can have it for half price. "Yours, 11 OK ACE GllEELEY. Poor Poe had said that genius might almost be defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. There was some sad self- love in this, doubtless; and. let us hope, his early death alone prevented him from relieving Mr. Greeley of the necessity of paying an exorbitant price for the poet s autograph. However this may be, Poe was popular as poet and critic, and did all he could in the literary world to cast contempt and ridicule upon " the Transcendentalists, as a certain number of writers, at the head of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson, were called. Thus, and by reason of other influences, the Transcendentalists were made to appear as decidedly heterodox in the literary church. They became a common target for innumerable paper-bullets of the brain; so that it was well nigh a reproach to be aTrans- cendentalist or an admirer of the school. Mr. Greeley proceeded with great vigour to put an end to this small business. The Transcendentalists were simply reformers in literature; believers in enlarging the realm of thought, in ensmalling the sphere of mere authority. They proposed to themselves to elevate the recognized standard of 170 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. opinion, whether of religion or what not. Not insisting that there is (absolutely) anything new under the sun, they believed in the still further improvement of the human mind by new methods, and that the happiness of the race could be vastly increased. It was their high ideal which gave them the name of Transcendentalists. They established a quarterly publica tion at Boston, called The Dial, of which Sarah Margaret Fuller became the editor, with Ealph Waldo Emerson and George Eipley as assistants. After a time Mr. Emerson became the editor, with his predecessor as chief assistant, but with little real change. To these reformers The Tribune extended hearty welcome. Mr. Greeley at once and forever appreciated their thought, their unselfishness, their sublime endeavour, and did all in his power to bring the world to his opinion. Margaret Fuller herself became connected with The Tribune in the latter part of 1844, and continued to be literary editor up to August 1846, when she departed for Europe. This acquaintance made the heroic period of Mr. G-reeley s life. He gives a full account of it in an article published in her memoirs, which will rightly find place here: My first acquaintance with Margaret Fuller was made through the pages of The Dial. The lofty range anl rare ability of that work, and its un-American richness of culture and ripeness of thought, naturally filled the fit audience, though few, with a high estimate of those who were known as its conductors and principal writers. Yet I do not now remem ber that any article, which strongly impressed me, was recogni/ed as from the pen of its female editor, prior to the appearance of The Great Law suit, afterwards matured into the volume more distinctively, yet not quite accurately, entitled Woman in the Nineteenth Century. I think this can hardly have failed to make VL. deep impression on the mind of every thoughtful reader, as the production of an original, vigorous, and earnest mind. Summer on the Lakes, which appeared some time after that essay, though before its expansion into a book, struck me as less ambitious in its aim, but more graceful and delicate in its execution; and as one of the clearest and most graphic delineations ever given of the Great Lakes, of the Prairies, and of the receding barbarism, and the rapidly advancing, but rude, repulsive semi-civilization, which were contending with most unequal forces for the possession of those rfch lands. I still consider Summer on the Lakes unequalled, especially in its pictures of the Prairies, and of the sunnier aspect of Pioneer life. " Yet, it was the suggestion of Mrs. Greeley who had spent some weeks of successive seasons in or near Boston, and who had there made the per- MARGARET FULLER. 171 sonal acquaintance of Miss Fullor, and formed a very high estimate of and warm attachment for her that induced me, in the autumn of 1844, to offer her terms, which were accepted, for her assistance in the literary depart ment of The Tribune. A home in my family was included in the stipula tion. I was myself barely acquainted with her when she thus came to reside with us, and I did not fully appreciate her nobler qualities for some months afterward. Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save at breakfast ; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social intercourse. Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly antagonism or rather to develop all possibl^ contrasts in our ideas and social habits. She was naturally inclined to luxury, and a good appearance before the world. My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare. She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both of which I rejected and condemned, even in the most homoeopathic dilutions; while, my general health being sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietetic habits t he cause of her almost habitual illness; and once, while we were still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast-table with a very severe head ache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take, which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at. her maturity of intellect and fixed ness of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us ; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance between us. "Her earlier contributions to The Tribune were not her best, and I did not at first prize her aid so highly as I afterward learned to do. She wrote always freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly; for her full and inti mate acquaintance with Continental literature, especially German, seemed to have marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular embarrassment and hesitation. She could write only when in the vein, and this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occasion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be reviewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspiration, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader: but to the inveterate hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any subject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the requisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day, or a happier frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of waiting for a change in 172 LIFE OF HOKACE GKKELEY. the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contributions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They often seemed to make their appearance - a day after the fair. " One other point of tacit antagonism between us may as well be noted. Margaret was always a most earnest, devoted champion of the Emancipa tion of Women from their past and present condition of inferiority, to an independence of Men. She demanded for them the fullest recognition of Social and Political Equality with the rougher sex ; the freest access to all stations, professions, employments, which are open to any. To this demand I heartily acceded. It seemed to me, however, that her clear per ceptions of abstract right were often overborne, in practice, by the influence of education and habit; that while she demanded absolute equality for Woman, she exacted a deference and courtesy from men to women, as women, which was entirely inconsistent with that requirement. In my view the equalizing theory can be enforced only by ignoring the habitual discrimination of men and women, as forming separate classes, and regarding all alike as simply persons, as human beings. So long as a lady shall deem herself in need of some gentleman s arm to conduct her properly out of a dining or ball-room, so long as she shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night, I cannot see how the Woman s Rights theory is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction. In this view Margaret did not at all concur, and the diversity was the incitement to much perfectly good- natured, but nevertheless sharpish sparring between us. Whenever she- said or did anything implying the usual demand of Woman on the courtesy and protection of Manhood, I was apt, before complying, to look her in the face and exclaim, with marked emphasis, quoting from her Woman in the Nineteenth Century, LET THEM BE SEA-CAPTAINS IF THEY WILL!" Of course, this was given and received as raillery, but it did not tend to ripen our intimacy or quicken my esteem into admiration. Though no unkind word ever passed between us, nor any approach to one, yet we two dwelt for months under the same roof, as scarcely more than acquaintances, meeting once a day at a common board, and having certain business relations with each other. Personally, I regarded her rather as my wife s cherished friend than as my own, possessing many lofty qualities and some prominent weaknesses, and a good deal spoiled by the unmeasured flattery of her little circle of inordinate admirers. For myself, burning no incense on any human shrine, I half-consciously resolved to keep my eye-beam clear, and escape the fascination which she seemed to exert over the eminent and cultivated persons, mainly women, who came to our out-of-the-way dwelling to visit her, and who seemed generally to regard her with a strangely Oriental adoration. "But, as time wore on, and I became inevitably better and better acquainted with her, I found myself drawn, almost irresistibly, into the general current. I found that her faults and weaknesses were all super- ficial and obvious to the most casual, if undazzled, observer. They rather MAJJGAKLT FULLER. dwindled than expanded upon a fuller knowledge; or rather, took on new and brighter aspects in the light of her radiant and lofty soul. I learned to know her as a most fearless and unselfish champion of Truth and Human Good at all hazards, ready to be their standard-bearer through danger and obloquy, and if need be, their martyr. I think few have more; keenly appreciated the material goods of life, Rank. Riches, Power, Luxury. Enjoyment ; but I know none who would have more cheerfully surrendered them all, if the well-being of our Race could thereby have been promoted. I have never met another in whom the inspiring hope of Immortality was so strengthened into profoundest conviction. She did not believe in our future and unending existence, she knew it, and lived ever in the broad glare of its morning twilight. "With a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet generous beyond the bounds of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own, she would have disbursed nine-tenths ot it in eager and well directed efforts to stay, or at least diminish, the flood of human misery. And it is but fair to state, that the liberality she evinced was fully paralleled by the liberality she experienced at the hands of others. Had she needed thou sands, and made her wants known she had friends who would have cheerfully supplied her. I think tew persons, in their pecuniary dealings, have experienced and evinced more of the better qualities of human nature than Margaret Fuller. She seemed to inspire those who approached her with that generosity which was a part of her nature. " Of her writings I do not propose to speak critically. I think most of her contributions to The Tribune, while she remained with us, were char ucterized by a directness, terseness, and practicality, which are wanting in some of her earlier productions, (rood judges have confirmed my own opinion, that while her essays in The Dial are more elaborate and ambi tious, her reviews in The Tribune are far better adapted to win the favour and sway the judgment of the great majority of readers. But, one characteristic of her writings I feel bound to commend, their absolute truthfulness. She never asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do, nor what would be the effect of saying anything; but simply, Is it the truth? Is it such as the public should know? And if her judgment answered, Yes, she uttered it; no matter what turmoil it might excite, nor what odium it might draw down on her own head. Perfect conscientiousness was an unfailing characteristic of her literary efforts. Even the severest of her critiques, that on Longfellow s Poems, for which an impulse in personal pique has been alleged, I happen with certainty to know had no such origin. When I first handed her the book to review, she excused herself, assigning the wide divergence of her views of Poetry from those of the author and his school, as her reason. She thus induced me to attempt the task of reviewing it myself. But day after day sped by, and I could find no hour that was not absolutely required for the performance of some duty that would not be put oft , nor turned over to another. At length I carried the book back to her in utter despair of ever finding an hour in which even to look through it; and, at 174: LIFE OF HOEACE GREELEY. my renewed and earnest request, she reluctantly undertook its discussion. The statement of these facts is but an act of justice to her memory. " Profoundly religious, though her creed was, at once, very broad and very short, with a genuine love for interiors in social position, whom she was habitually studying, by her counsel and teachings, to elevate and improve, she won the confidence and affection of those who attracted her, by unbounded sympathy and trust, She probably knew the cherished secrets of more hearts than any one else, because she freely imparted her own. With a full share both of intellectual and of family pride, she pre eminently recogni/ed and responded to the essential brotherhood of all human kind, and needed but to know that a fellow-being required her counsel or assistance, to render her, not, merely willing, but eager to impart it. Loving ease, luxury, and the world s good opinion, she stood ready to renounce them all, at the call of pity or of duty. I think no one, not radically averse to the whole system of domestic servitude, would have treated servants, of whatever class, with such uniform and thoughtful consideration, a regard which wholly merged their factitious condition in their antecedent and permanent humanity. I think few servants ever lived weeks with her, who were not dignified and lastingly benefited by her influence and her counsels. They might be at first repelled, by what seemed her too stately manner and exacting disposition, but they soon learned to esteem and love her. " I have known few women, and scarcely another maiden, who had the heart and the courage to speak with such frank compassion, in mixed circles of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The con . templatiou of their treatment, especially by the guilty authors of their ruin, moved her to a calm and mournful indignation, which she did not attempt to suppress nor control. Others were willing to pity and deplore; Margaret was more inclined to vindicate and to redeem. She did not hesitate to avow that on meeting some of these abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of Womanhood, realizing and loathing their debase ment; anxious to escape it; and only repelled by the sad consciousness that for them sympathy and society remained only so long as they should persist in the ways of pollution. Those who have read her Woman, may remember some daring comparisons therein suggested between these Pariahs of society and large classes of their respectable sisters; and that was no fitful expression, no sudden outbreak, but impelled by her most deliberate convictions. I think, if she had been born to large for tune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of Virtue, would have been one of her most cherished and first realized conceptions. " Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics. The pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by that she imparted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor mystical : for no one had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into their sports, their feelings, their enjoyments. She could narrate almost any stoiy in MARUAKKT FULLER. 175 language level to their capacities, and in a manner calculated to bring out their hearty and often boisterously-expressed delight. She possessed mar vellous powers of observation and imitation or mimicry; and, had she been attracted to the stage, would have been the first actress America had produced, whether in tragedy or comedy. Her faculty of mimicking was not needed to commend her to the hearts of children, but it had its effect in increasing the fascinations of her genial nature and her heartfelt joy in their society. To amuse and instruct them was an achievement for which she would readily forego any personal object; and her intuitive perception of the toys, games, stories, rhymes, etc., best adapted to arrest and enchain their attention, was unsurpassed. Between her and my only child. then living, who was eight months old when she came to us, and something over two years when she sailed for Europe, tendrils of affection gradually interwined themselves, which I trust Death has not severed, but rather multiplied and strengthened. She became his teacher, playmate, and. monitor: and he requited her with a prodigality of love and admiration. " I shall not soon forget their meeting in my office, after some weeks separation, just before she left us forever. His mother had brought him in from the country, and left him asleep on my sofa, while she was absent making purchases, and he had rolled off and hurt himself in the fall, waking with the shock in a frenzy of anger, just before Margaret, hearing of his arrival, rushed into the office to find him. I was vainly attempting to soothe him as she entered: but he was running from one end to the other of the office, crying passionately, and refusing to be pacified. She- hastened to him, in perfect confidence that her endearments would calm the current of his feelings, that the sound of her well-remembered voice would banish all thought of his pain, and that another moment, would see him restored to gentleness; but, half-wakened, he did not heed her, and probably did not even realize who it was that caught him repeatedly in her arms and tenderly insisted that he should restrain himself. At last she desisted in despair; and, with the bitter tears streaming down her face, observed: Pickie, many friends have treated me unkindly, but no one had ever the power to cut me to the heart as you have! Being thus let alone, he soon came to himself, and their mutual delight in the meeting was rather heightened by the momentary estrangement. " They had one more meeting ; the last on earth ! Aunty Margaret was to embark for Europe on a certain day, and Pickie was brought into the city to bid her farewell. They met this time also at my office, and together we thence repaired to the ferry-boat, on which she was returning to her residence in Brooklyn to complete her preparations for the voyage. There they took a tender and affecting leave of each other. But soon his mother called at the office, on her way to the departing ship, and we were easily persuaded to accompany her thither, and say farewell once more, to the manifest satisfaction of both Margaret and the youngest of her devoted friends. Thus they parted, never to meet again in time. She sent him messages and presents repeatedly from Europe; and he, 176 LIFE OF HORACE GREKLKY. when somewhat older, dictated a letter in return, which was joyfully received and acknowledged. When the mother of our great-souled friend spent some days with us nearly two years afterward, Pickie talked to her often and lovingly of Aunty Margaret, proposing that they two should take a boat and go over and see her, for, to his infantile conception, the low coast of Long Island, visible just across the East River, was that Europe to which she had sailed, and where she was unaccountably detained so long. Alas ! a far longer and more adventurous journey was required to re-unite those loving souls! The 12th of July, 1849, saw him stricken down from health to death, by the relentless cholera ; and my letter, announcing that calamity, drew from her a burst of passionate sorrow, such as hardly any bereavement but the loss of a very near relative could have impelled. Another year had just ended, when a calamity, equally sudden, bereft a wide circle of her likewise, with her husband and infant son. Little did I fear, when I bade her a confident Good-by, on the deck of her outward-bound ship, that the sea would close over her earthly remains ere we should meet again; far less that the light of my eyes and the cynosure of my hopes, who then bade her a tenderer and sadder fare well, would precede her on the dim pathway to that Father s house whence is no returning! Ah, well! God is above all, and gracious alike in what He conceals and what He discloses; benignant and bounteous, as well when He reclaims as when He bestows. In a few years, at farthest, our loved and lost ones will welcome us to their home." At a later period of his life, Mr. Greeley spoke of this great woman with even warmer enthusiasm and higher admiration. He said: \Ve have seen that the first impressions made by Margaret, even on those who soon learned to admire her most, were not favourable ; and it was decidedly so in my case. A sufferer myself, and at times scarcely able to ride to and from the office, I yet did a day s work each day, regardless of nerves or moods ; but she had no such capacity for incessant labour. If quantity only were considered, I could easily write ten columns to her one : indeed, she would only write at all when in the vein ; and her head aches and other infirmities often precluded all labour for days. Meantime, perhaps, the interest of the theme had evaporated, or the book to be reviewed had the bloom brushed from its cheek by some rival journal. Attendance and care were very needful to her; she would evidently have been happier amid other and more abundant furniture than graced our dwelling; and, while nothing was said, I felt that a richer and more gen erous diet than ours would have been more accordant with her tastes and wishes. Then I had a notion that strong-minded women should be above the weakness of fearing to go anywhere, at any time, alone, that the sex would have to emancipate itself from thraldom to etiquette and the need of a masculine arm in crossing a street or a room, before it could expect to fight its way to the bar, the bench, the jury-box, and the polls. Nor MARGARET FULLER. 177 was I wholly exempt from the vulgar prejudice against female claimants of functions hitherto devolved only on men. as mistaking thV source of their dissatisfaction. Her cousin, Channiug, narrating a day s conversa tion with her in 1840, delicately says : But the trajredy of Margaret s history was deeper yet. Behind the poet was the woman. the fond and relying, the heroic and disinterested woman. The very glow of her poetic enthusiasm was but an otitflush of trustful affection: the very restlessness of her intellect was the confession that her heart hart found no home. A book-worm, ;i dilettante, 1 a * pedant, I had heard her sueeringly called; but now it was evident that her seemirg insensibility was virgin pride, and her absorption in study the; na .ural vent of emotions which had met no object worthy of life-long attachment. At once, many of her peculiarities became intelligible. Fitfulness, unlooked-for changes of mood, miscon ceptions of words and actions, substitution of fancy for fact. which had annoyed me during: the previous season, as inconsistent in a person of such capacious judgment and sustained self-government, were now referred to the morbid influence of affections pent up to prey upon themselves. 1 " If 1 had attempted to say this, I should have somehow blundered out that, noble and great as she was, a good husband and two or three bouncing babies would have emancipated her from a deal of cant and nonsense. Yet I very soon noted, even before I was prepared to ratify their judg ment, that the women who visited us to make or improve her acquaintance seemed instinctively to recognize and defer to her as their superior in thought and culture. Some who were her seniors, and whose writings had achieved a far wider and more profitable popularity than hers, were eager to sit at her feet, and to listen to her casual utterances as to those of an oracle. Yet there was no assumption of precedence, no exaction of defer ence, on her part ; for, though somewhat stately and reserved in the pres ence of strangers, no one " thawed out " more completely, or was more unstarched and cordial in manner, when surrounded by her friends. Her magnetic sway over these was marvellous, unaccountable: women who had known her but a day revealed to her the most jealously guarded secrets of their lives, seeking her sympathy and counsel thereon, and were them selves annoyed at having done so when the magnetism of her presence was withdrawn. I judge that she was the repository of more confidences than any cotemporary ; and I am sure no one had ever reason to regret the im prudent precipitancy of their trust. Nor were these revelations made by those only of her own plane of life, but chambermaids and seamstresses unburdened their souls to her, seeking and receiving her counsel; while children found her a delightful playmate and a capital friend. My son Arthur (otherwise "Pickie"), who was but eight months old when she came to us, learned to walk and to talk in her society, and to love and admire her as few but nearest relatives are ever loved and admired by a child. For, as the elephant s trunk serves either to rend a limb from the oak or pick up a pin, so her wonderful range of capacities, of experiences, of sympathies, seemed adapted to every condition and phase of humanity. For every effort to limit vice, ignorance, and misery, she had a ready, eager ear, and a willing hand; so that her charities large in proportion to her 12 378 IAVI: (>: nonAr;; GKEKLEY. slender means were signally enhanced by the fitness and fulness of her wise and generous counsel, the readiness and emphasis with which she, pub licly and privately, commended to those richer than herself any object de serving their alms. She had once attended, with other noble women, a gathering of outcasts of their sex ; and, being asked how they appeared to her, replied, " As women like myself, save that they are victims of wrong and misfortune." No project of moral or social reform ever failed to command her generous, cheering benediction, even when she could not share the sanguine hopes of its authors : she trusted that these might somehow benefit the objects of their self-sacrifice, and felt confident that they must, at all events, be blest in their own moral natures. I doubt that our various benevolent and reformatory associations had ever before, or have ever since, received such wise, discriminating commendation to the favour of the rich, as they did from her pen during her connection with The Tribune. In closing her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," not long before she came to New- York, she had said : "I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are they yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every ehasin revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some few effigies, that once stood for symbols of hnman destiny, have b 3en broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is loft, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny, faint, but not to be mistaken, streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard, Though MANY have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts. " Though ten years had not passed since her first visit to Emerson, at Concord, so graphically narrated by him in a reminiscence wherefroui 1 have already quoted, care and suffering had meantime detracted much from the lightness of her step, the buoyancy of her spirits. If, in any of her varying moods, she was so gay-hearted and mirth-provoking as he there describes her, I never happened to be a witness ; but then I was never so intimate and admired a friend as he became at an early day, and remained to the last. Satirical she could still be, on great provocation ; but she rarely, and, I judge, reluctantly, gave evidence of her eminent power to rebuke assumption or .paeanness by caricaturing or intensifying their unconscious exhibition. She could be joyous, and even merry; but her usual manner, while with us, was one of grave thoughtfulness, absorp tion in noble deeds, and in paramount aspirations and efforts to leave some narrow corner of the world somewhat better than she had found it. While Margaret Fuller was one of the editors of The Tri bune, she wrote several articles from two to five each week. On account of ill health, she could only write when "in the mood," the mood sometimes declining to come at her bidding. Recollections of a Busy Life, 177-81. FEMALE JOURNALISTS. 179 Her literary reviews were rather disquisitions upon the authors of books than criticisms upon the works themselves. It was she, and in articles in The Tribune, who first taught Americans to appreciate and to love George Sand. " With a bleeding heart and bewildered feet," said the American woman of her sister in France, " she sought the Truth, and if she lost the way, returned as soon as convinced she had done so, but she would never hide the fact that she had lost it. What God knows I dare avow to man, seems to be her motto. If there are thousands in our land at this hour who cannot think of George Sand but with tears, and reverence, and love, they may bless Margaret Fuller for the delicious sadness. But for Margaret, the genius of George Sand might with us be even yet trampled under the feet of men. The literary columns of The Tribune at this time also bore generous testimony to the genius of Carlyle, Longfellow, Richter, Eugene Sue, and others, and gave new charm and fascination to the grand old masters of English literature. Margaret Fuller also contributed essays of a general character to The Tribune, which were remarkable for freshness, suggestiveness, and wisdom. Among them, as one might well conclude from what we have seen Mr. Greeley has said of her, and from what ought to be generally known of her works, were articles upon Woman s Rights. He was surely correct in saying that her " Woman in the Nineteenth Century " if not the clearest and most logical was the loftiest and most commanding assertion that had been made of the right of Woman to be regarded and treated as an independent, intelligent, rational being, entitled to an equal voice in framing and modifying the laws she is required to obey, and in con trolling and disposing of the property she has inherited or aided to acquire. He was confident there lived neither man nor woman who might not profit by a thoughtful perusal of that work. I have judged it just thus to speak and quote at such length of Margaret Fuller, not only because Mr. Greeley s acquaint ance with her made the finest epic poem of his life, but because she was the pioneer of American female journalists. She did not succeed in persuading her country that Woman ought to 180 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. bt treated as an independent, intelligent, rational being, to be so acknowledged by the laws; but by her own life she demon strated the truth of her claim, and set an example which has been followed by many women who have added power and great beneficence to the most influential of professions. Many of our great journals now have female editors and correspondents who receive equal pay and equal honour with men in similar positions. Miss Kate Field won deserved dis tinction as a writer on The Tribune, and even greater reputation on the platform. " Fanny Fern " became the first of literary sensationalists. ISTo Washington correspondent has more grandly succeeded than Mary Clemner Ames. Grace Green wood, in journalism, has had vastly more readers than she ever procured as a writer of books, piquant, genial, irreverent as ghe was, even when, between solemn green bindings, she declared that a certain dilapidated mill property was not worth a dam. Mrs. Emily E. "Briggs ("Olivia") has made a wide reputation and a good deal of money, besides accomplishing a great amount of good, on Forney s Philadelphia Press. No representative of metropolitan journal at the National Capital is more industrious, more pains-taking, than she, not one who gets hold of better news, and not one who equals her in inde pendence and originality. The literary department of The Chicago Evening Post has been noted for its impartial criti cisms, their elevated tone, and delicate appreciation of genius, learning, art. This department of that journal has for years been conducted by Mrs. Sara M. Hubbard. One of the associate editors of the paper is Miss Buchanan, a lady of real genius, who can dash off a leader on almost any topic in the most lively and readable style. Celia Logan has not only contributed essays to several of our magazines, but was for some time assistant editor of a Washington journal which has never been so excellent since she departed from it. Her less brilliant but more successful sister, Olive, has been a frequent contributor to The Tribune. Yery many other instances might be given. These show that the example set by Margaret Fuller was not in vain. If she did not so happily succeed in persuading the public of the s&mm mnw , f i j MARGARET FULLER. HARRIET BEECHER bTOWE. CHARLES DICKENS. 181 correctness of lier views of Woman s Rights, it may have been because of the unfortunate fact that too many of those who espoused the cause were selfish, croakers, ill educated, coarse, and vituperative. She at least succeeded in giving Woman honourable, most influential position in journalism, whence in good time Woman may safely demand the rights for which she has long begged in vain; which, it would seem probable, she would have had much more generally recognized ere this time but that the management of the cause was usurped by women, the preposterous scoldings of some and the atrocious principles of others of whom made that cause appear, first highly ridiculous and then surpassingly immoral. These excesses had not occurred but for the untimely death of Mar garet Fuller. Her commanding genius and her rich wisdom would have prevented any cause she advocated and led from being regarded by many as either ridiculous or wrong. Horace Greeley was among the first of American journalists to recognize the genius of Charles Dickens. In the very first number of The New-Yorker, he published a story by " Boz," a fiom de pluine then unknown in America, and but just struggling into notice in England. Upon the occasion of Mr. Dickens s first visit to America, The Tribune did not so heartily approve the dinners in his honour as his advocacy of an international law of copyright. In reply to certain com plaints of the novelist s advocacy of such a measure Mr. Greeley said: "We trust he will not be deterred from speaking the frank, round truth by any mistaken courtesy, diffidence, or misapprehension of public senti ment. He ought to speak out on this matter, for who shall protest against robbery if those who are robbed may not? Here is a man who writes for a living and writes nobly; and we of this country greedily devour his writings, are entertained and instructed by them, yet refuse so to protect his rights as an author that he can realize a single dollar from all their vast American sale and popularity. Is this right? Do we look well offer ing him toasts, compliments, and other syllabub, while we refuse him naked justice? while we say that every man may take from him the fruits of his labours without recompense or redress ? It does very well in a dinner speech to say that fame and popularity, and all that, are more than sordid gold; but he has a wife and four children, whom his death may very pos sibly leave destitute, perhaps dependent for their bread, while publishers, 182 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. who have grown rich on his writings, roll by in their carriages, and mil lions who have been instructed by them contribute not one farthing to their comfort. But suppose him rich, if you please, the justice of the case is unaltered. He is the just owner of his own productions as much as though he had made axes or horse-shoes; and the people who refuse to protect his right, ought not to insult him with the mockery of thriftless praise. Let us be just, and then generous. Good reader! if you think our guest ought to be enabled to live by and enjoy the fruits of his talents and toil, just put your names to a petition for an International Copyright Law, and then you can take his hand heartily if it comes in your way, and say, if need be, I have done what is in my power to protect you from robbery ! The passage of this act of long deferred justice will be a greater tribute to his worth and achievements than acres of inflated compliments soaked in hogsheads of champagne." Washington Irving was chosen to preside at the Dickens Dinner in New- York. With great genius were connected in his nature the tenderness and the modesty of woman. He dreaded the dinner-speech. " I know," he said, " I shall break down." When the time came for him to welcome the distin guished guest he began an appropriate speech which he had prepared in excellent manner, and the profound respect and love in which he was held caused the deepest attention and perfect silence except the sound of his own voice. This and the up-turned faces frightened him, and after two or three sentences he sat down, blushing like a maiden and completely embarrassed. - There!" said he, after he had recovered his presence of mind enough to speak to the gentleman sitting next to him, " I told you I would break down; and I have done it." There never was a failure so entirely successful as this. It could hardly have been the beloved writer if he had not " broken down." The Tribune defended Mr. Dickens against the attacks made upon him by reason of certain criticisms of his upon American character and customs in his " American JS otes " and the novel of "Martin Chuzzlewit." It may not be generally known that the "Eden " of the work last named is the town of Cairo, in Illinois, where Mr. Dickens made an investment in town lots, which, as he refused to play the popular American game of " diamond cut diamond," never returned him any dividends. THE DICKENS DINNER. 183 Justice to Cairo demands the statement that Mr. Dickens s "Eden" is in some degree imaginary. I may be excused, I trust, for taking the liberty, of which Mr. Dickens set many examples, of here speaking of his reception in New- York on his second visit to America in 1868. The Dickens Dinner at Delmonico s on the 18th of April was surely one of the finest occasions of the kind which even Del- monico has witnessed. The dinner was given by the Press Club of the city. Horace Greeley presided. There were many distinguished men, journalists, artists, writers, present. There sat Henry J. Raymond, to whom years of experience as jour nalist and public man had given reputation, wisdom, and the happiest social manners. Near by was George William Curtis, with a face sicklied o er with the pale cast of thought, who, like Raymond, was one of the few Americans excelling both as speakers and as writers. There too was Mr. Whitelaw Reid, looking younger than he was, destined to be Mr. Greeley s successor as Editor of The Tribune, and to bear up its lofty character without a day of drooping hesitation. Murat Hal- stead, of the West, was there, and near him was Samuel Bowles of the most widely influential journal of Xew England. Gen eral Joseph R. Hawley, soldier, statesman, editor, and great in each capacity, made one of the most notable of the speeches. Mr. James Parton, the biographer of Franklin, of Jackson, and of Greeley, on this occasion represented The North American Review. There also was Augustus Maverick, soon to become the biographer of Mr. Raymond, whose untimely death occurred only a little more than a year afterwards. The World news paper was represented by Mr. D. G. Croly, Mr. F. B. Carpenter, and Mr. Henry E. Sweetser. Mr. Thomas McElrath, long Mr. Greeley s partner, Mr. Samuel Sinclair, for years the business manager of The Tribune, Mr. J. Russell Young, managing editor, Mr. R. G. Hassard, associate editor, and Mr. F. J. Ottarson, city editor, and Mr. J. F. Cleveland, associate editor, and compiler of The Tribune Almanac participated in the proceedings. Mr. Charles Xordhoff, of The Evening 1 Post, one of our most accomplished journalists, was present. There too were editors of religious journals, of magazines, 184 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. and representatives of great publishing houses. There also was Mr. William Orton, who spoiled a great editor when he made himself the head of a great telegraph company. Others there were less or more distinguished in journal ism, in letters, in commerce than some of those here named. To preside over an assemblage of such men, with Charles Dickens for their guest, was an honour which Mr. Greeley highly prized, and which he justly deserved. The auto biographical portion of his speech follows: It is now a little more than thirty-four years since I, a young printer, recently located in the city of New- York, had the audacity to undertake the editing and publishing a weekly newspaper for the first time. Look ing around at that day for materials with which to make an engaging appearance before the public, among the London magazines which I pur chased for the occasion was the old Monthly, containing a story by a then unknown writer known to us only by the quaint designation of " Boz." That story, entitled, I think, at that time, " Delicate Attentions," but in its present form entitled, " Mr. Watkins Tottle," I selected and published in the first number of the first journal with which my name was connected. Pickwick was then an unchronicled, if not uncreated character. Sam Weller had not yet arisen to increase the mirth of the Anglo-Saxon race. We had not heard, as we have since heard, of the writer of those sketches, whose career then I may claim to have in some sort commenced with my own [great laughter], and the relation of admirer and admired has con tinued from that day to the present. I am one of not more than twenty of the present company who welcomed him in this country, on an occa sion much like this, a quarter of a century ago. When I came to visit Europe, now seventeen years ago, one of my most pleasant experiences there, and one of my pleasantest recollections of Europe, is that of buying in the farthest city I visited the city of Venice, on the Adriatic an Ital ian newspaper, and amusing myself with what I could not read a trans lation of "David Copperfield," wherein the dialogue between Ham and Peggotty, with which I was familiar in English, was rendered into very amusing Italian. * * * * Friends and fellow-labourers, as I am to set you an example to-night of a short speech, I will, without further pre lude, ask you to join me in this sentiment: "Health and happiness, honour and generous, because just, recompense to our friend and guest, Charles Dickens." Mr. Dickens responded as he only could respond to a toast. Mr. Greeley gracefully called out Mr. Raymond to respond in behalf of the New- York Press. Mr. Curtis spoke of "Che Weekly Press in happiest manner. General Hawley responded THE TKIBUXE LN CKIT1CISM. 1S5 to The Press of New England. Others spoke, and all things moved ou iu a manner that was worthy of the working jour nalists of New- York and the most widely-read novelist of his times. " How happily the days Of Thalaba went by!" Certainly the occasion of the Dickens Dinner in New-York was one of the bright, glorious field-days of Horace Greeley s life. Let us return. The Tribune not only aided in giving the Transcendentalists the influence and popularity to which the most thoughtful minds of the country were entitled, but it held out a generous hand of welcome and of help to every struggling thought. There came a time when still a new school of thinkers occupied prominent position in the literary world, thinkers who undertook to advance the cause of truth through the demonstrations of science. Proclaiming that skepticism is a nobler intellectual quality than credulity, and that no authority can establish an absurdity or overthrow that which is true, they were condemned unheard by many as enemies of religion, and, consequently, as assailants of the highest civilization. Among the class of thinkers to whom \ve refer were a number of the most subtle and comprehensive minds. Now, it is confessed, they hare done much for scholar ship, for science, for truth; and their influence has been such that the religion they were supposed to assail has become more liberal, more beautiful, and more beneficent in the judg ment of those whose opinions are most entitled to respect. We are apt to forget that it required not only wisdom but courage for criticism to recognize and honour even Ralph Waldo Emerson. Margaret Fuller, and George Ripley; that so it was also with George Sand, and later with Huxley, Her bert Spenser, Darwin, and others whom mere authority sought to put down. It will not be supposed, of course, that Mr. Greeley person ally wrote the literary articles of The Tribune which, in the manner we have pointed out, accomplished so much for litera- 186 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. ture, at the same time enlarging its influence and power, and the influence and power of the public press. He chose his literary as his other assistants, however, with the object of having his views promulgated in this as in other departments of the journal; and The Tribune had not been long established until both George Ripley and Margaret Fuller were of the corps Those were the literary lieutenants he wanted; and he procured their services. If it be proper to generalize here, it might be remarked that the literary history of The New-York Tribune is one of the most palpable demonstrations of Horace Greeley s many-sided genius. Consider that he had never had an academical course of education. With the exception of almost the slightest possible aid from common schools during early boyhood, hi& intellectual training had been all his own. He had acquired no language except that in which his fathers spoke, and with that he seems ever to have been content. And yet there was no one scholar among his countrymen, no matter how pro foundly versed in learning, who accomplished so much for literature, or who gave it so just, comprehensive, wise appreci ation, as a means of human progress and of general enlighten ment. There were those whose views in respect to the mode of thorough education may have been more correct than his, CJ t/ but none who approached him in giving what may be called general intellectual culture to the general public. The notable fact of which I have just spoken is a demonstra tion not only of Mr. Greeley s many-sided genius, but also of his democratic nature. One of the people, he sought those means by which the people^ could be most benefitted, and, what with his great genius and his democratic nature, he found means, through literary influences, to confer at once the greatest practicable good upon the people and upon literature. I think I am correct in the judgment that no literary man has conferred greater or more permanent good upon literature than Horace Greeley, himself entirely self-taught. That I am correct in respect to Mr. Greeley s wise appreci ation of literature is substantiated not only by what has been set forth in regard to The Tribune s labours and influence THE TRIBUNE IN LITERATURE. 187 herein, but by the fact that so many works of acknowledged place in our letters have been produced by Mr. Greeley him self and by his assistants on the great journal he founded. This is not the place to speak critically or in full detail of these literary labours. It cannot but be recollected, however, that Mr. Bayard Taylor, who has enriched the literature of his own and of other countries, with poetry, romance, and travels, is a graduate of The Tribune. The most extensive and the most useful of American cyclopedias was prepared under the editorial supervision of Mr. Dana and Mr. Ripley. As this volume is passing through the press, a new and enlarged edition of that comprehensive work is being prepared by the same editors. Mr. Dana has written and edited other works which will long be found in every well-regulated library. A few years ago a work was published entitled "Tribune Essays," being a collection of editorials by Mr. Congdon, one of the associate editors of The Tribune. The most of the articles were upon the subject of slavery, whose adherents were laughed at and satirized by Mr. Congdon in the happiest pos sible manner. The subject has become obsolete, but if one wishes to find the finest humour in the most polished style, I know not where to direct him other than to this volume of Tribune Essays. The work is pervaded throughout by an elevated tone of political morality, which, most unfortunately, the destruction of slavery has not engrafted into the conduct of our national affairs. The rush for notoriety has crowded our book marts with innumerable works of an ephemeral nature; but year by year, generation by generation, the sifting process goes on and the good alone will be finally left. Then it will, perhaps, be found that from no one quarter were pro duced so many works of value and literary merit, as by the Editor and Assistant Editors of The New-York Tribune during the years of Horace Greeley s control of the paper. CHAPTEE XII. ERA OF THE MEXICAN WAR GEN. TAYLOR, PRESIDENT. The Tribune from 1844 to 1848 Its Era of Irrepressible Conflicts Rapid Review of its Battles Moves on to Anti-Slavery Its Hostility to the War with Mexico Enthusiastic Sympathy with Popular Movements in Europe " Slieve-gammon " Tribune Office Burned Mr. Gree- ley Visits the West The Presidential Campaign of- 1848 Mr. Gree- ley Dissatisfied with the Nomination of General Taylor Declines to Support the Ticket Speech at Vauxhall Garden Nominated for Congress Taylor and Clay. THE defeat of Henry Clay for the Presidency in 1844, aroused Mr. Greeley to a more profound consideration of the question of slavery than, as an editor, he had yet given it. The com mon people have an adage, that if our fore-sights were as good as our hind-sights, we should oftener hit the mark. We are apt to do injustice to men who were unable to foresee events of which we have full knowledge. Thus, in the case of Horace Greeley, it is easily to be seen, in 1873, that the Liberal party of 1844 more truly represented his views than the Whig party. But it would be most unjust to conclude that, therefore, he made a mistake in 1844. He \vas abreast with the times: and cannot be justly censured for not being ahead of them. After the election of Mr. Polk, The Tribune became an anti-slavery paper. Before that event, Mr. Greeley had believed in the wrongfulness of slavery, but his journal had rather deprecated the agitation of the subject as tending to be of injury rather than benefit to the slaves. Heretofore Horace Greeley, the politician, had in this matter, mastered Horace Greeley, the reformer. But in 1845, he said: "When we find the Union on the brink of a most unjust and rapacious war, instigated wholly i (as is officially proclaimed) by a determination to uphold and fortify slavery, then we do not see how it can longer be ration ally disputed that the North has much, very much, to do with A FIGHTING ERA. 189 slavery. If we may he drawn in to fight for it, it would he hard indeed that we should not be allowed to talk of it." Henceforth Mr. Greeley and The Tribune did " talk of ife," uttering no uncertain sound. T>ut before The Tribune came to be called an " abolition journal, it had an era of disputes with its cotemporary jour nals of the city of a remarkable nature. The three or four years following the defeat of Henry Clay may be well styled the era of The Tribune s irrepressible conflicts. We have already related the account of Mr. Greeley s famous dispute with Mr. Raymond upon the subject of Socialism. And as herein The Tribune was supposed to purpose unrelenting war against society, order, property, it was but natural that it should call up against it an army of foes. The Democratic- press naturally assailed its most vigorous opponent; but the Whig journals of the city and many of the country were scarcely less hostile than those of the party opposed. Two classes of people inevitably have many to kick at them: the / highly successful, and those who have the misfortune to fail/ Mr. Greeley was highly successful. In a few years, he had moved on from the position of an awkward, ill dressed country man, to a position of vast influence. His name was upon every tongue; his journal had become almost a necessity to hundreds of thousands of persons. There were those, there always are, who were envious of this success. They deter mined to put down the successful man. And as he did have many opinions which were then decidedly unpopular, there seemed to be reasons for assailing him. The liberal views of Mr. Greeley upon the subject of reli gion were made to figure as a charge of " infidelity." To an assault of this kind by the Express, Mr. Greeley replied : "The editor of The Tribune has never been anything else than a believer in the Christian Religion, and has for many years been a member of a Christian Church. He never wrote or uttered a syllable in favour of Infidelity. But truth is lost on The Express, which can never forgive us the Infidelity of circulating a good many more copies, Daily and Weekly, than are taken of that paper." 190 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. The coarse nature of the assaults made upon Mr. Greeley during these years may be judged from the following, taken from The Courier and Enquirer, of which James Watson Webb was editor. Coloned Webb had been sentenced to two years confinement in the penitentiary for the crime of duelling, but Governor Seward had pardoned him after a few hours incar ceration. Colonel Webb said: "The editor of The Tribune is an Abolitionist; we precisely the reverse. He is a philosopher ; we are a Christian. He is a pupil of Graham, and would have all the world live upon bran-bread and sawdust; we are in favour of living as our fathers did, and of enjoying in moderation the good things which Providence has bestowed upon us. He is the advocate of the Fourierism, Socialism, and all the tomfooleries which have given birth to the debasing and disgusting spectacles of vice and immorality which Fanny Wright, Collins, and others exhibit. ***** He seeks for notoriety by pretending to great eccentricity of character and habits, and by the strangeness of his theories and practices; we, on the contrary, are content with following in the beaten path, and accomplish ing the good we can, in the old-fashioned way. He lays claim to great ness by wandering through the streets with a hat double the size of ,his head, a coat after the fashion of Jacob s of old, with one leg of his panta loons inside and the other outside of his boot, and with boots all bespat tered with mud, or, possibly, a shoe on one foot and a boot on the other, and glorying in an unwashed and unshaven person. We, on the contrary, /eschew all such affectation as weak and silly; we think there is a difference between notoriety and distinction ; we recognize the social obligation to Jact and dress according to our station in life; and we look upon clean liness of person as inseparable from purity of thought and benevolence of heart. In short, there is not the slightest resemblance between the editor of The Tribune and ourself, politically, morall}-, or socially ; and it is only wheu his affectation and impudence are unbearable, that we condescend to notice him or his press." -i Mr. Greeley replied: " It is true that the Editor of The Tribune chooses mainly (not entirely) vegetable food; but he never troubles his readers on "the subject; it does- not wrong them; why should it concern the Colonel? It is hard for philosophy that so humble a man shall be made to stand as its exemplar; while Christianity is personified by the hero of the Sunday duel with Hon. Tom. Marshall ; but such luck will happen. "As to our personal appearance, it does seem time that we should say something, to stay the flood of nonsense with which the town must by this ^ time be nauseated. Some donkey a while ago, apparently anxious to assail or annoy the editor of this paper, and not well knowing with what, JAMPS WATSON WEBB 191 originated the story of his carelessness of personal appearance; and since then every blockhead of the same disposition and distressed by a similar lack of ideas, has repeated and exaggerated the foolery; until from its origin in the Albany Microscope it has sunk down at last to the columns of The Courier and Enquirer, growing more absurd at every landing. Yet all this time the object of this silly raillery has doubtless worn better clothes than two-thirds of those who thus assailed him better than any of them could honestly wear, if they paid their debts otherwise than by bankruptcy; while, if they are indeed more cleanly than he, they must bathe very thoroughly not less than twice a day. The editor of The Tribune is the son of a poor and humble farmer; came to New- York a minor, without a friend within 200 miles, less than ten dollars in his pocket, and precious little besides; he has never had a dollar from a rela tive, and has for years laboured under a load of debt (thrown on him by others misconduct and the revulsion of 1837), which he can now just see to the end of. Thenceforth he maybe able to make a better show, if deemed essential by his friends; for himself he has not much time or thought to bestow on the matter. That he ever affected eccentricity is most untrue ; and certainly no costume he ever appeared in would create such & sensation in Broadway as that James Watson Webb would have worn but for the clemency of Governor Seward. Heaven grant our assailant may never hang with such weight on another Whig Executive! We <lrop him." Commenting upon this article, in his Life of Raymond, Mr. Maverick says: "Colonel Webb made no reply. Mr. Greeley had flattened him." The Colonel was so enraged, however, that he undertook to incite a mob against The Tribune, where upon Mr. Greeley said: " This is no new trick on the part of The Courier. It is not the first nor the second time that it has attempted to excite a mob to violence and outrage against those whom it hates. In July, 1884, when, owing to its ferocious denunciations of the Abolitionists, a furious and law-defying mob held virtual possession of our city, assaulting dwellings, churches, and persons obnoxious to its hate, and when the Mayor called out the citizens by Proclamation to assist in restoring tranquillity, The Courier (llth July) proclaimed: " It is time, for the reputation of the city, and perhaps for the welfare of themselves, that these Abolitionists and Amalgamationists should know the ground on which they stand. They are, we learn, always clamourous with the Police for protection, and demand it as a right inherent to their characters as American citizens. Now we tell them that, when they openly and publicly outrage public feeling, they have no riyht to demand protection from the People they thus insult. When they endeavour to disseminate opinions which, if generally imbibed, must infallibly destroy our National 192 LIFE OF H OK ACE GKEELKY. Union, and produce scenes of blood and carnage horrid to think of; when they thus preach up treason and murder, the ceyis of the, Law indignantly toithdraw* its shelter from them. " When they vilify our religion by classing the Redeemer of the world in the lowest grade of the human species ; when they debase the noble race from which we spring that race which called civilization into existence, and from which have proceeded all the great, the brave, and the good that have ever lived and place it in the same scale as the most stupid, ferocious, and cowardly of the divisions into wbich the Crea tor has divided mankind, then they place themselves beyond the pale of all law, for they violate every law, divine and human. Ought not, we ask, our City authorities to make them understand this; to tell them that they prosecute their treasonable and beastly plans at their own peril f " Such is the man, such the means, by which he seeks to bully Freemen out of the rights of Free Speech and Free Thought. There are those who cower before his threats and his ruffian appeals to mob violence here is one who never will ! All the powers of Land-jobbing and Slave-jobbing cannot drive us one inch from the ground we have assumed of determined and open hostility to this atrocious war, its contrivers and abettors. Let those who threaten us with assassination understand, once for all, that we pity while we despise their baseness." In hostility to the Mexican war, Mr. Greeley was constantly outspoken. Many Whigs, many friends of The Tribune and of Mr. Greeley thought that herein his course was impolitic, as it surely was not popular. At last, in reply to complaining letters, lie said: " Our faith is strong and clear that we serve our country best by obey ing our Maker in all things, and that he requires us to bear open, un equivocal testimony against every iniquity, however specious, and to expose every lying pretense whereby men are instigated to imbrue their hands in each other s blood. We do not believe it possible that our country can be prospered in such a war as this. It may be victorious, it may acquire immense accessions of territory; but these victories, these acquisitions, will prove fearful calamities, by sapping the morals of our people, by inflating them with pride and corrupting them with the lust of conquest and of gold, and leading them to look to the commerce of the Indies and the dominion of the seas for those substantial blessings which follow only in the wake of peaceful, contented Labour. So sure as the universe has a Ruler will every acre of territory we acquire by this war prove to our nation a curse and the source of infinite calamities." It was an unpleasant duty to quote the foregoing extracts from The Courier and Enquirer and The Tribune. But I con cluded, after deliberate consideration, that it wa-s a duty. It KEVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE. 103 will hardly be disputed, I suppose, by any one whose judgment is entitled to respect, that Mr. Greeley had a genuinely benig nant, benevolent nature. This is shown by innumerable facts, from his school days till the time when the shadow of death encompassed him. About this very time, he frequently deliv- ered a lecture beginning: "To do good is the proper business* of life to qualify for earnestness and efficiency in doing good, is the true end of Education. The sum of all true knowledge in the child is a consciousness that he lives not for himself, but for his Creator and his Race." This grand truth Mr. Greeley was all the time endeavouring to enforce by example, by speech, by writings. Is it any wonder that, finding himself misunder stood, grossly misrepresented by the selfish, assailed with bitter vindictiveness by those who were envious of his substan tial success, that he came to his own defense with an earnest ness which sometimes boiled over in wrath, and caused him to make use of abusive expressions which it had been well had they never been uttered? Under such assaults as he received, \ patience, though sublime, was exhausted; generosity, though unbounded, was consumed; and, forced into the fight, he delivered battle with terrible effect and a mercilessness which may be described as almost savage. He won the victory; but the effect of the long conflict was to give bitterness to a nature with which bitterness was not congenial. And this acquired quality clung to him throughout the remainder of his life, and was the origin of some of its most unhappy incidents ; incidents which, with their accompanying expressions, injured the har mony and dimmed the beauty of a character of such surpassing greatness and natural goodness. But if Mr. Greeley found reason to oppose the Mexican war, he found war* taking place in other parts of the world, in which he took the deepest interest. Late in May, 1848, the steamship Cambria arrived at New-York from Liverpool, bringing intelligence of the abdication of Louis Philippe, King of France; of the proclamation of the French Republic; of other events which were the thrilling precursors of those revo lutionary attempts in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Ireland, for whose success the sympathies of the American 13 194: LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. people generally were profoundly interested. Though Margaret Fuller was at this time in Europe, a correspondent of The Tribune, and its bureau in the old world was well conducted. Mr. Dana was sent abroad with the object of procuring the fullest and most reliable intelligence touching the revolutionary movements. He wrote a series of letters to The Tribune, signing them with the initials of his name, which gave the paper great interest and value, and which may yet be consulted with profit by those who appreciate the lessons of that eventful epoch. Mr. Greeley himself was animated by great enthusiasm for the popular cause, and wrote articles almost daily upon the subject. He was placed upon the " Directory of the Friends of Ireland/ of which he remained an active member, and to the funds of which he contributed with characteristic liberality. One may find at this day in the files of The Tribune of the remarkable era under consideration sufficient data upon which to construct a full and valuable history of events which con vulsed a continent, but. unhappily, without the immediate benefit to mankind which the friends of man so sanguinelv ~ hoped. Mr. Greeley was exceedingly hopeful, but his judg ment was not so far swayed by his sentiments as to injure the value of his advice, or throw suspicion upon the sincerity of his warnings. A somewhat amusing event in newspaper circles occurred in connexion with current events in Ireland. The country was in excited expectation in regard to the Irish rebellion, when The Tribune published three letters, dated at Dublin about the first of August giving an account of " the battle of Slievena- mon," in which the commander of the British forces and sev eral thousand troops were reported killed by the populace. The Irish and their friends were greatly elated; but it soon transpiring that no such aftair had occurred, The Tribune was charged with imposing upon the public. The truth was, The Tribune was imposed upon by the correspondent, and he had written the letters in good faith, believing every word he said. Dublin was all excitement, and the Slievenamon affair was there by many believed to have occurred. It is hardly neces sary to say that The Tribune s cotemporaries made no small BURNED OUT. 195 sport of this " Slievegammon " business as they called it. At the time of the appearance of the letters Mr. Greeley was out of the city, looking after copper-mines in Michigan. But the period from the defeat of Henry Clay to the election of General Taylor of which we are now treating, was one not only of tierce conflicts at home and abroad, but one of varied fortune in The Tribune. Mi 1 . Polk had not yet been inaugu rated, when the building in which The Tribune was published was destroyed by fire. This was on the morning of February 5, 1845. The catastrophe is thus described by The Tribune of the next morning: "At 4 o clock, yesterday morning, a boy in our employment entered our publication office, as usual, and kindled a iliv in the stove for the day, after which lie returned to the mailing-room below, and resumed folding- newspapers. Half an hour afterward a clerk, who slept on the counter of the publication office, was awoke by a sensation of heat, and found the room in flames. He escaped with a slight scorching. A hasty effort was made by two or three persons to extinguish the fire by casting water upon it, but the fierce wind then blowing rushed in as the doors were opened, and drove the flames through the building with inconceivable rapidity. Mr. Graham and our clerk, Robert M. Strebeigh, were sleeping in the second story, until awakened by the roar of the flames, their room being full of smoke and fire. The door and stairway being on fire, they escaped with only their night-clothes, by jumping from a rear window, each losing a gold watch, and Mr. Graham nearly $500 in cash, which was in his pocket-book under his pillow. Robert was somewhat cut in the face, on striking the ground, but not seriously. In our printing-office, fifth story, two compositors were at work making up The Weekly Tribune for the press, and had barely time to escape before the stairway was in flames. In the basement our pressmen were at work on The Daily Tribune of the morning, and had printed about three-fourths of the edition. The balance of course went with everything else, including a supply of paper, and The Weekly Tribune, printed on one side. A few books were hastily caught up and saved, but nothing else not even the daily form, on which the pressmen were working. So complete a destruction of a daily newspaper office was never known. From the editorial rooms, not a paper was saved ; and, besides all the editor s own manuscripts, correspondence, and collec tion of valuable books, some manuscripts belonging to friends, of great value to them, are gone. "Our loss, so far as money can replace it, is about $18,000, of which $10,000 was covered by insurance. The loss of property which insurance would not cover, we feel more keenly. If our mail-books come out whole from our Salamander safe, now buried among the burning ruins, we shall be gratefully content. 196 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. " It is usual on such occasions to ask, Why were you not fully insured ? It was impossible, from the nature of our business, that we should be so; and no man could have imagined that such an establishment, in which men were constantly at work night and day, could be wholly consumed by fire. There has not been another night, since the building was put up, when it could have been burned down, even if deliberately fired for that purpose. But when this fire broke out, under a strong gale and snow storm of twenty-four hours continuance, which had rendered the streets impassable, it was well-nigh impossible to drag an engine at all. Some of them could not be got out of their bouses; others were dragged a few rods and then given up of necessity ; and those which reached the fire found the nearest hydrant frozen up, and only to be opened with an axe. Mean time, the w r hole building was in a blaze." By the kind assistance of other offices and energy on the part of Tribune management, the paper was published as usual the next day. Shortly afterwards these " Beflectious over the Fire" appeared: " We have been called, editorially, to scissor out a great many fires, both small and great, and have done so with cool philosophy, not reflecting how much to some one man the little paragraph would most assuredly mean. The late complete and summary burning up of our office, licked up clean as it was by the red flames, in a few hours, has taught us a lesson on this head. Aside from all pecuniary loss, how great is the suffering pro duced by a fire! A hundred little articles of no use to any one save the owner, things that people would look at day after day, and see nothing in, that we ourselves have contemplated with cool indifference, now that they are irrevocably destroyed, come up in the shape of reminiscences, and seem as if they had been worth their weight in gold. " We would not indulge in unnecessary sentiment, but even the old desk at which we sat, the ponderous inkstand, the familiar faces of files of Cor respondence, the choice collection of pamphlets, the unfinished essay, the charts by which we steered can they all have vanished, never more to be seen ? Truly your fire makes clean work, and is, of all executive officers, super-eminent. Perhaps that last choice batch of letters may be some where on file; we are almost tempted to cry, Devil! find it up! Poh! it is a mere cinder now ; some Fathoms deep my letter lies; Of its lines is tinder made. " No Arabian tale can cradle a wilder fiction, or show better how alto gether illusory life is. Those solid walls of brick, those five decent stories, those steep and difficult stairs, the swinging doors, the Sanctum, scene of many a deep political drama, of many a pathetic tale, utterly whiffed out, as one summarily snuffs out a spermaceti on retiring for the night. And all perfectly true. "THE FAR WEST." . 197 One always has some private satisfaction in his own particular misery. Consider what a night it was that burnt us out, that we were conquered by the elements, went up in flames heroically on the wildest, windiest, stormiest night these dozen years, not by any fault of human enterprise, but fairly conquered by stress of weather ; there was a great flourish of trumpets at all events. "And consider, above all, that Salamander safe; how, after all, the fire, assisted by the elements, only came off second best, not being able to reduce that safe into ashes. That is the streak of sunshine through the v dun wreaths of smoke, the combat of human ingenuity against the despe rate encounter of the seething heat. But those boots, and Webster s Dic tionary well ! we were handsomely whipped there, we acknowledge." It thus appears that Mr. Greeley took the disaster with philosophical serenity. Margaret Fuller, then writing for The Tribune, wrote to a friend : " You have heard that The Tribune office was burned to the ground. For a day I thought it must make a diiference, but it has served only to increase my admi ration for Mr. Greeley s smiling courage. He has really a strong character." In about ninety days the office was rebuilt, making one of the most complete and convenient printing establishments then in existence, but afterwards greatly sur passed by the offices of other daily journals in New- York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Ever after the fire, The Tribune kept in reserve complete duplicate materials, so that, in case of another similar accident, a new Tribune could instantly be set in motion. This dupli cate office was generously offered to a Chicago journal after the fearful fire which destroyed a great portion of that city in October, 1871. In the Spring of 1847, Mr. Greeley made his first journey to " the far West." Some three years before he had taken some stock in a mining company of the Lake Superior Copper region, whose deposits of mineral wealth had then been recently discovered, and had persuaded others to do likewise; and now made a business visit to the property, taking with him cash to pay oft workmen. At Detroit he bought a yoke of oxen, a supply of forage, provisions, and necessary imple ments, and proceeded on his journey. He found Lake Huron shrouded in fog and mist throughout its entire length. "At the Sault Ste. Marie," he says, "we found a small but smart 198 ^ LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. young village, to whose assembled inhabitants two of us made temperance addresses, which I think some of them needed. * His goods were taken across the portage by wagon, when they and their owner " took the only old propeller which had, as yet, been got across and launched on Lake Superior, and started up the lake." The vessel reached Eagle Harbour, Mr. Greeley s place of destination, on the 15th of June. He observed that the shal low water of the harbour was frozen over next morning for some distance from shore. He attended to the business in hand, making considerable journeys round about on foot, and being wonderfully annoyed by " more ferocious clouds of mos quitoes and gnats than ever before or since presented their bills, and insisted on immediate satisfaction." Returning, Mr. Greeley paid a visit to Chicago, travelling per steamer, by way of Mackinac, Sbeboygan, and Milwaukee. Chicago, he says, was "then a smart and growing village, where some thousands of us gathered from the East and from the West in a grand River and Harbour Convention, which was organized on the 4th of July." Mr. Greeley thought the proceedings of this Convention, whereat its President, Hon. Edward Bates, made the greatest speech of his long public life, gave a considerable impetus to the subsequent great growth of Chicago. He adds, descriptive of the country to the westward of Chicago : " When the Convention had closed its deliberations, Mr. John Y. Scammon, then a rising young lawyer, since an eminent banker of Chicago, took his carriage and pair, and drove with me for three days over the prairies west of that city ; crossing Fox River at Geneva, proceeding to what is now Syca more, and returning by Elgin to the City of the Lakes. I had, eight years earlier, traversed eastern Michigan, and there made the acquaintance of what were called wet prairies, by which I had not been fascinated. But the prairies of Illinois are of another order ; and, though by no means that dead, unbroken level -which many suppose them, but cut up by brook- beds, sloughs, and roads, which were merely wagon-tracks in a deep, black soil, wore a generally delightful aspect. Forests were less frequent than seemed desirable ; but openings, or scattered trees, were never out of sight ; and the small and scanty settlements were usually surrounded by promising fields of wheat and Indian corn. I presume we did not see one human habitation where a traveller over our route would now see fifty ; MILWAUKEE. 199 while the average value or cost of the rude cabins we passed would hardly exceed $200, where that of the present houses would reach at least $2,000. Teamsters conveying grain to Chicago, or returning with lumber, we frequently met ; yet inns were decidedly scarce ; since few teamsters could afford to pay money for food or shelter, while the great mass stopped for rest or meals under almost any tree, turned out their horses to graze, or fed them from their wagons, while the} ate of the substantial, wholesome food they had brought from home. I was told that a load of wheat taken sixty miles to Chicago in those days just about paid for a return load of fence-boards, leaving the farmer who made the exchange little or nothing wherewith to pay tavern-bills. Few of the early pioneers of Illinois took thither more than a fair wagon-load of worldly gear and $100 in money; many lacking the $100, and had but half a load of household stuff in the wagon, the other half being composed of wife and children ; yet all found somehow enough to eat, and did not suffer intolerably from cold; and now those children enjoy comforts and many revel in luxuries which their parents scarcely aspired to. Do they realize and fitly honour the self- forgetting courage and devotion to which they are so deeply indebted ?" Milwaukee at this time appeared to Mr. Greeley as " a smart but struggling country village, consisting of some three or four hundred new houses clustered about a steamboat landing at the mouth of a shallow, crooked creek." Sheboygan was then relatively of far greater importance than now, but he reached the untouched primeval wilderness within two miles from the steamboat-landing, and travelled under the shade of the primitive forest through most of the succeeding ten miles to the residence of an uncle he was visiting. And yet he pre dicted that Wisconsin at the close of the nineteenth century would be the home " of three millions of people as energetic, industrious, worthy, and happy, as any on earth." At this time no railway reached Chicago and " barely one line (the Michigan Central) pointed directly at that young city." He crossed the lake by steamer, and thence went to Kalamazoo by stage, where he took cars for Detroit, and going hence to Buffalo by steamer, by rail to Albany, reached home by a T^orth River steamer. Toward the close of August, 1848, Mr. Greeley again visited his Lake Superior mining property, and found that encourag ing progress had been made since his former visit. The investment never brought him, however, any notable profits. On this visit he tested the assertion that the waters of Lake 200 LIFE OF HORACE GREELKY. Superior are at all times too cold to bathe in. "I stripped," he says, " and plunged in ; but was driven out as by a legion of infuriated hornets. The water was too cold to be endured; and I never thereafter doubted the assertion, that a hot day was never known on that Lake at a distance of a mile or more from land." This was also the year of a presidential campaign. The Democratic convention, held at Baltimore, had nominated General Lewis Cass, of Michigan, and General William (). Butler, of Kentucky, for President and Vice-President respect ively, in the latter part of May. The Whigs held their con vention in Philadelphia, on the 7th of June following, and had several days stormy sessions. Mr. Greeley, who was present, earnestly desired the nomination of Henry Clay, and an endorsement of the Wilmot Proviso in the platform. Unable to secure either the one or the other, he left the convention in disgust, and for some time refused, both personally and edito rially, to support the ticket nominated, General Zachary Taylor, of Louisiana, for President, and Millard Fillmore, of New York, for Vice-President. Large numbers of Whigs throughout the country heartily sympathized with Mr. Gree ley, and the disaffection might have been fatal to success, but for even greater disaffection, in the Democratic party, with the Baltimore nominations. A " Free Democratic Convention " was held at Buffalo, in August, and Martin Van Buren, Ex- President, was nominated for the first place, the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, for the second place on the ticket. Meantime, however, the ^disaffection of the Whigs had greatly decreased. General Taylor pronounced himself "a Whig, though not an ultra Whig. And, generally, as his history and character became better known, respect for him increased. Slowly though surely the friends of Mr. Clay, who were also quite generally throughout the North advocates of a Protective Tariff and slavery restriction, were induced to sup port the ticket. The reasons for the course of such were not better stated, perhaps, than they were by Mr. Greeley in a speech at Yauxhall Garden, New- York, not long after his VAUXHALL GAKDEN SPEECH. 201 return from Lake Superior, namely on the 27th of September. Happening to attend a Whig meeting there, Mr. Greeley was called out, and responded in a speech, which may be read with profit to this day. It has been in substance reported thus: " 1 trust, fellow-citizens, I shall never be afraid nor ashamed to meet a Whig assemblage and express my sentiments on the political questions of the day. And although I have had no intimation till now that my presence here was expected or desired, I am the more ready to answer your call since I have heard intimations, even from this stand, that there was some mystery in my course to be cleared up some astounding revela tion with regard to it to be expected. And our eloquent friend from Ken tucky even volunteered, in his remarks, to see me personally and get me right. If there be indeed any mystery in the premises, I will do my best to dispel it. But I have, in truth, nothing to reveal. I stated in announc ing Gen. Taylor s nomination, the day after it was made, that I would support it if I saw no other way to defeat the election of Lewis Cass. That pledge I have ever regarded. I shall faithfully redeem it. And, since there is now no chance remaining that any other than Gen. Taylor or Gen. Cass can be elected, I shall henceforth support the ticket nominated at Philadelphia, and do what I can for its election. " But I have not changed my opinion of the nomination of Gen. Taylor. I believe it was unwise and unjust. For Gen. Taylor, personally, I have ever spoken with respect; but I believe a candidate could and should have been chosen more deserving, more capable, more popular. I cannot pre tend to support him with enthusiasm, for I do not feel any. "Yet while I frankly avow that I would do little merely to make Gen. Taylor President, I cannot forget that others stand or fall with him, and that among them are Fillmore and Fish and Patterson, with whom I have battled for the Whig cause ever since I was entitled to vote, and to whom I cannot now be unfaithful. I cannot forget that if Gen. Taylor be elected we shall in all probability have a Whig Congress: if Gen. Cass is elected, a Loco-Foco Congress. Who can ask me to throw away all these because of my objections to Gen. Taylor ? "And then the question of Free Soil, what shall be the fate of that? I presume there are here some Free Soil men [ Yes! Yes! all Free Soil! ] I mean those to whom the question of extending or restricting Slavery outweighs all other considerations. I ask these what hope they have of keeping Slavery out of California and New-Mexico with Gen. Cass Presi dent, and a Loco-Foco Congress ? I have none. And I appeal to even- Free Soil Whig to ask himself this question How would South Carolina and Texas wish you to vote ? Can you doubt that your bitter adversaries would rejoice to hear that you had resolved to break off from the Whig party and permit Gen. Cass to be chosen President, with an obedient Con gress ? / cannot doubt it. And I cannot believe that a wise or worthy course, which my bitterest adversaries would gladly work out for me. 202 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. " Of Gen. Taylor s soundness on this question, I feel no assurance, and can give none. But I believe him clearly pledged by his letters to leave legislation to Congress, and not attempt to control by his veto the policy of the country. I believe a Whig Congress will not consent to extend Slavery, and that a Whig President will not go to war with Congress and the general spirit of his party. So believing, I shall support the Whig nominations with a view to the triumph of Free Soil, trusting that the day is not distant when an amendment of the Federal Constitution will give the appointment of Postmasters and other local officers to the People, and strip the President of the enormous and anti-republican patronage which now causes the whole political action of the country to hinge upon its Presidential Elections. Such are my views ; such will be my course. I trust it will no longer be pretended that there is any mystery about them." We shall presently see that Mr. Greeley was elected to Con gress upon the same ticket with General Taylor. After the election, Mr. Brooks published a card of thanksgiving to those who had voted for him which suggested one from Mr. Greeley. As it particularly refers to matters of the year just now in review, it is quoted here: "TO THE ELECTORS OF THE Vl-ra CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. " The undersigned, late a candidate for Congress, respectfully returns his thanks first, to his political opponents for the uniform kindness and consideration with which he was treated by them throughout the canvass, and the unsolicited suffrages with which he was honoured by many of them ; secondly, to the great mass of his political brethren, for the ardent, enthusiastic, and effective support which they rendered him ; and, lastly, to that small portion of the Whig electors who saw fit to withhold from him their votes, thereby nearly or quite neutralizing the support he received from the opposite party. Claiming for himself the right to vote for or against any candidate of his party as his own sense of right and duty shall dictate, he very freely accords to all others the same liberty, without offence or inquisition. " During the late canvass I have not, according to my best recollection, spoken of myself, and have not replied in any way to any sort of attack or imputation. I have in no manner sought to deprecate the objections, nor to soothe the terrors of that large and most influential class who deem my advocacy of Land Reform and Social Re-organization synonymous with Infidelity and systematic Robbery. To have entered upon explanations or vindications of my views on these subjects in the crisis of a great National struggle, which taxed every energy, and demanded every thought, com ported neither with my leisure nor my inclination. " Neither have I seen fit at any time to justify nor allude to my parti cipation in the efforts made here last summer to aid the people of Ireland in their anticipated struggle for Liberty and Independence. I shall not do GENERAL TAYLOR. 203 so now. What I did then, in behalf of the Irish millions, I stand ready to do again, so far as my means will permit, when a similar opportunity, with a like prospect of success, is presented and not for them only, but for any equally oppressed and suffering people on the face of the earth. If any extortion and plunder were contrived and perpetrated in the meetings for Ireland at Vauxhall last season, I am wholly unconscious of it, though I ought to be as well informed as to tbe alleged extortion and plunder as most others, whether my information were obtained in the character of conspirator or that of victim. I feel impelled, however, by the expressions employed in Mr. Brooks s card, to state that I have found nothing like an inclination to extortion and plunder in the coun cils of the leading friends of Ireland in this city, and nothing like a suspicion of such baseness among the thousands who sustained and cheered them in their efforts. All the suspicions and imputations to which those have been subjected, who freely gave their money and their exertions in aid of the generous though ineffectual effort for Ireland s liberation, have originated with those who never gave that cause a prayer or a shilling, and have not yet travelled beyond them. " Respectfully, HORACE GBEELKY. " New- York, Nov. 8, 1848." Though Mr. Greeley had many reasons which impelled him to decidedly object to General Taylor s nomination, and which also caused him to decline to support the nomination for some months after it had been made, yet may it now be seen that his judgment was in errour. In after years he ingenuously admitted as much, in a candid tribute to General Taylor, when he said: " I think I never saw General Taylor save for a moment at the Inaugura tion Ball, on the night after his accession to the Presidency. I was never introduced and never wrote to him ; and, while I ultimately supported and voted for him, I did not hurry myself to secure his election. In fact, that of 1848 was my easiest and least anxious Presidential canvass since 1824. When a resolve opposing the Wilrnot Proviso was laid on the table at the Convention that nominated him, I felt that niy zeal, rny enthusiasm for the Whig cause was also laid there. "Yet I have little faith in third-party movements, which are generally impelled by an occult purpose to help one of the leading parties by draw ing off votes from the other. General Taylor at length avowed himself a Whig, but not an ultra Whig ; and I believe that was about the literal truth. Zealous Whigs apprehended that he might, if elected, shrink from discharging the officeholders appointed by Tyler and Polk; but, after giving him a trial, they were constrained to admit that he turned out better than had been expected. He was a man of little education or literary culture, but of signal good sense, coolness, and freedom from 204 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. prejudice. Few trained and polished statesmen have proved fitter deposi taries of civil power than this rough old soldier, whose life had been largely passed in camp and bivouac, on the rude outskirt of civilization, or in savage wastes far beyond it. General Taylor died too soon for his country s good, but not till he had proved himself a wise and good ruler, if not even a great one." This seems to express agreement with the opinion, enter tained by many persons at the time familiar with the inside history of the conduct of public affairs, that President Taylor, had he lived, would have resisted the encroachments of the Slave Power and the obnoxious portions of the " Compromise measures." But not so long as Henry Clay lived, nor for many years after his death, did Mr. Greeley discover his mis take of 1848. 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 215. CHAPTEK XIII. A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. Elected to Congress for "a Short Term " His Opinion of the Chaplaincy Land Reform The Famous Congressional Mileage Expose Ani mated Debates Tilt with "Long John" Wentworth on the Tariff Question A Lively Debate on Congressional Books Speech on Re cruiting in the Army Speeches on the California and New Mexico Bills The Last Night of the Session "War Between the North and South Begun" Some of His Distinguished Fellow-Members: Messrs. Winthrop; Lincoln; Collamer; Giddings; Schenck ; Horace Mann; Andrew Johnson; Ashmun; Wentworth; Cobb; R. W. Thompson; Jacob Thompson ; George W. Jones, of Tennessee ; Stephens ; Toombs ; Botts; John S. Pendleton; and others Address To his Constituents Congress Then and Now. HORACE GREELEY, as we have seen, was greatly dissatisfied with the nomination of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for President in 1848. He was what the virtuous politicians of the present day would call " a sore-head;" a sore-head being a person with some ideas of his own, and a man not signed, sealed, and delivered up in fee-simple to party. Mr. Greeley finally supported General Taylor, however, and actually ran for Congress on the same ticket with him. This came about in this w^ise: In the election of 1846, members of the Thirtieth Congress being then chosen, David S. Jackson, Democrat, had been returned from the upper district of New-York city, beating Colonel James Monroe, the Whig candidate, by importing the adult male paupers from the almshouse on Blackwell s Island " not merely those," dryly says Mr. Greeley, " who had resided in our district before they honoured our city by condescending to live at her expense, but those who had been gathered in from other districts." The House of Representatives, on proof of the fraud, unseated Jackson, but instead of seating Colonel Monroe, ordered a new election. Biit by this time it 206 LITE OF HORACE GREELEY. was far in the year 1848. Colonel Monroe expected to be a candidate for the vacancy and for the Thirty-first Congress. For the latter, however, the name of James Brooks had been engraved in large letters on "the slate," and the slate could not be broken. Colonel Monroe indignantly declined the nom ination for " the short term," and it was offered to Mr. Greeley. He at first resolved to decline " that fag-end of a term," but the nomination being most kindly pressed upon him. with strong reasons therefor, he accepted it. Mr. Brooks was nomi nated for the succeeding Congress. A politician soon called on Mr. Greeley, professing to be from Mr. Brooks, to inquire as to what should be done to secure their election. " Tell Mr. Brooks," said Mr. Greeley, " that we have only to keep so still that no particular attention will be called to us, and General Taylor will carry us both in." The result verified the predic tion, General Taylor receiving in the district 11,000 votes, Mr. Greeley 9,932, and Mr. Brooks 9,709. General Cass had 6,826 votes, Mr. Van Buren 1,681. Mr. Greeley s district embraced all of the city of New- York above Fourteenth street and three wards lying below that street, and contained about one-third of the population of the city. Its boundaries now contain more than two-thirds of the popu lation. Soon after taking his seat, Mr. Greeley introduced a bill in the nature of the homestead act successful not till years afterwards and in reply to a Western member who wanted to know why New York should busy herself as to the disposal of the public lauds, said that his interest in the matter was greatly stimulated by the fact that he represented more landless men than any other member on -the floor. The reason was regarded as highly satisfactory, so far as Mr. Greeley was concerned. Mr. Greeley took his seat in the House of Representatives on Mondav, December 4th. On the next day he o;ave notice of a */ v O bill to discourage speculation in public lands, and to secure homes thereon to actual settlers and cultivators. Members and Senators were slow in reaching the Capital. If one will now take up The Congressional Globe of that session he will find this entry day after day: "Several other members appeared this day and took their seats- " and in the Senate such entries FIRST HOMESTEAD BILL. 207 as these: "Mr. Rusk, of Texas, and Mr. Borland, of Arkan sas, appeared in their seats to-day." "Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, appeared in his place to-day." (12th.) " Mr. Douglas. Do I understand the Chair that there is no quorum present?" The Chair replied that there was no quorum." " Mr. Doug las. Then if there is no quorum, I presume no business is in order." " The Chair replied that no business was in order until a quorum was present." " On motion of Mr. Hale the Senate then adjourned." This mode of proceeding did not strike Mr. Greeley favourably. He thought that men who were paid to be in Washington, engaged in legislation, ought to be there legislating. He wrote a letter to The Tribune upon the subject, which had some vig- ourous English in it. From this letter it would seem that he held the Congressional Chaplaincy in no very exalted esteem. He says : " On the third day, the Senate did not even succeed in forming a quorum, out of fifty-seven or eight members, who are all sure to be in for their pay and mileage, only twenty-nine appeared in their seats ; and the annual hypocrisy of electing a chaplain had to go over and waste another day. If either House hod a chaplain who dare preach to its members what they ought to hear of their faithlessness, their neglect of duty, their iniquitous waste of time, and robbery of the public by taking from the treasury money which they had not even attempted to earn then there would be some sense in the chaplain business; but any ill-bred Nathan or Elijah who should undertake such a job would be kicked out in short order. So the chaplaincy remains a thing of grimace and mummery, nicely calcu lated to help some flockless and complaisant shepherd to a few hundred dollars, and impose on devout simpletons an exalted notion of the piety of Congress. Should not the truth be spoken ?" A week after notice, Mr. Greeley introduced his Homestead bill, which was referred to the Committee on Public Lands. On the 27th of the following February the Chairman of that Committee reported the bill back to the House without amend ment which was equivalent to recommending no action on the measure. Mr. Greeley obtained the floor, and made the fol lowing speech: This is the bill which I introduced at an early day, upon notice given on the second day of the session. It is the only bill which has been before the 208 IJFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. Committee on Public Lands this winter, proposing to recognize in any form, the principle that a man is entitled to live someicTiere, although he has no money wherewith to buy land to live on. This bill asserts this principle in the meekest and least exceptionable manner. It respects the pledges solemnly made of the proceeds of our public lands to securp the payment of our Mexican war loans. The lee of every acre of the public lands will remain in the United States, under the provisions of this bill, until it shall have been purchased and paid for by the holder. And, while it thus guards the interests of the whole country, it secures a home to every one who will claim it, without money and without price. Such are the gen eral characteristics of this bill. Its material provisions are as follows : 1. Every citizen or applicant for citizenship is authorized by this bill to claim and settle upon any quarter-section of the public lands subject to private entry at the minimum price, receiving a certificate of right of pre emption thereto for seven years thereafter. 2. At any time during those seven years, upon giving due proof that he has improved, cultivated, built a dwelling upon, and now actually inhabits that quarter-section, and is the owner or claimant of no other land what ever, he (or she) shall be entitled (if a single person) to a right of unlimited occupancy to forty acres of said tract, or (if the married head of a family) to a like right of occupancy to any legal subdivision of eighty acres thereof, to be his without payment, and to pass to his heirs or assigns, who are owners or claimants of not more than one hundred and sixty acres of land, this included. 3. The balance of the one hundred and sixty acres covered by pre emption, as aforesaid, may be purchased by the legal occupant at any time within the seven years existence of the preemption, at the present mini mum price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, - with legal interest thereon from the date of preemption. If not so purchased, it will be open to pre emption or purchase by any other person, as aforesaid. 4. Any person may purchase, at the present legal minimum, any quantity of the public lands, making affidavit that he requires the same, and the whole of it, for his own use and improvement ; but any person failing or neglecting to make and file such affidavit shall be charged, and shall pay, for whatever land he may buy, the minimum price of five dollars per acre. Such, in substance, is the biH submitted by me, and now before the House, which the Committee on Public Lands have reported to be sum marily dismissed. I shall not tax the time of the House with any argument in its favour, for which there is now no time. I simply ask the yeas and nays on the rejection of the bill. 1 In view of what has since taken place, one would naturally suppose that the bill and speech would have met with general favour. Here was the origin of the Homestead act, now uni versally acknowledged as one of the most beneficent measures 1 Congressional Globe, Vol. 20, p. 605. LAND REFORM. 209 ever passed by Congress. But this bill was introduced in 1848, and by Horace Greeley, a socialist! Mr. Goggin, of Virginia (and a Whig), after the speech, moved that the bill be laid on the table. Mr. Greeley said : " I ask the yeas and nays on that motion;" and even this was denied. "Only about twenty members, 1 proceeds The Globe, "rising to second the call for the yeas and nays, they were not ordered ; and the bill, by a viva voce vote, was laid on the table." Such was the apparently humiliating disaster which befell Mr. Greeley s measure of land reform. The House went on in its usual hum-drum fashion, congratulating itself that a " pestilent agrarian " had been silenced. That was a notable mistake. Mr. Greeley was beginning his return match with Mr. Eaymond. And was beaten again! But the game is not won till it is ended. Soon we shall behold banners inscribed with Horace Greeley s little speech of February 27, 1849, reduced to an apothegm: "Lands for the Landless," or it may be, "Homes for the Homeless." We shall see a great party take it up and gain invincible strength thereby. We shall see the policy enacted into law. We shall see its practical results in the wonderful development of a continent, and innumerable happy homes. We shall even see that wherein Ho race Greeley s plan was departed from, in substantial principle, therein lay unwisdom, and thence sprang gross abuses, scandalous wrongs, appalling corruptions. But we have anticipated. Let us return to Mr. Greeley s earlier days in Congress again. Perhaps we ought to beg pardon for having followed him through this "wild-goose chase" of a Homestead Law; this attempt to graft an "ism" into national legislation. On December 18th, Mr. Greeley offered a resolution that the Secretary of the Kavy be requested to inquire into and report upon the expediency and feasibility of temporarily employing the whole or a portion of our national vessels now on the Pacific station, in the transportation, at moderate rates, of American citizens and their effects, from Panama and the Mexican ports on the Pacific coast, to San Francisco. This was during the period of the great migration to California, 210 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. whose gold fields had recently been discovered, and Mr. Greeley s object was, of course, to aid the emigrants as much as could be done by the general government. The resolution laid over under the rules, there being objection, but it was agreed to when called up two days afterwards. 3 One of the greatest of newspaper "hits" in the history of modern journalism, was an article by Mr. Greeley in The Tribune, in which he made what became known as the famous Congressional Mileage Expose. The expose appeared on December 22d. The portion of the article which attracted immediate and universal attention was a tabular statement, showing: 1. The name of each Representative in Congress; 2. Actual distance from his residence to Washington by the shortest post-route; 3. Distance for which he is paid mileage; 4. Amount of mileage actually received by him ; and 5. Excess of mileage received over what would have been paid, mileage being computed by the shortest mail-route. The excess thus figured out as having been paid members of the Thirtieth Con gress made an aggregate of $73,492.60. The excess of miles travelled was 183,031, making a distance something greater than the circumference of the earth seven times measured. With very few exceptions, every Senator and Representative was shown to have travelled less or more " circuitous miles." It may well be supposed that this number of The Tribune was eagerly sought after. Every body in New- York went to talking on the mileage question. As the paper reached the country, the topic engaged some of every one s attention. Other jour nals took it up. In fine, the Congressional Mileage Expose stirred up a universal sensation. And this sensation was greater, perhaps, at Washington, and within the Capitol, than anywhere else. On the 27th, an excited debate upon the subject occurred. Among Mr. Greeley s fellow-members of the House was Mr. William Sawyer, of Ohio, a Democrat. Mr. Sawyer, with some rural habits cling ing to him after he reached the political metropolis, had been accustomed to take a little lunch of crackers and "Bologna" at his desk in Representative Hall, whereupon a reporter for 4 The Congressional Globe, Vol. 20, p. 71. THE MILEAGE EXPOSE. 211 The Tribune, without the fear of Sawyer before his eyes, had dubbed him "Sausage Sawyer." It was this eminent gentle man who first entered into the Mileage Debate in the House, though there had been a great deal of energetic language used by members in private conversation previously to Mr. Sawyer s starting the ball in the Hall. The morning had been occupied chiefly with a consideration of the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia, when, that having been disposed of for the time being, Mr. Sawyer "rose to a question of privilege. " He supposed," he said, " it would be a question of privilege, inasmuch as it involved the honesty, the honour, and the integrity of members of this House, and of himself among the number." Mr. Sawyer s oratory, it will be observed, had a notable resemblance to that of Sir Robert Hazlewood, a somewhat absurd baronet in Scott s " Guy Mannering." Mr. Sawyer proceeded to say that "he referred to a publication made in The Tribune of the 22d instant, relative to the mileage of the members of this House." Mr. Sawyer figured in the Expose with a mileage excess of $281.60. And he undertook to show that the object of the expos6, as to him, was to place him before his constituents " in the light [one might say dark ness, rather] of having acted falsely and fraudulently in this matter." John Pettit, of Indiana, who was described by the Whig journals of that commonwealth as " the premium black guard of this State," with a rudeness of expression only pardonable by reason of its truth, John Pettit here interposed, as he cast one eye up and the other down, with saying, " the gentleman need not be disturbed, for nobody who reads The Tribune believed it." Nevertheless, Mr. Sawyer went on, until the Speaker interposed, saying it was quite obvious that if one gentleman were allowed to proceed on this subject, as a question of privilege, all the members might with equal propriety claim the same right. Mr. Speaker (Robert 0. Winthrop) began to perceive that if all those one hundred and eighty odd thousand miles of " excess " were to be explained away on questions of privilege, by abuse of Mr. Greeley, nothing else could be done. But the House voted that it was a question of privilege, and Mr. Sawyer 212 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. went on. He bravely determined " that neither a publication which did him so gross injustice, nor its author, should escape that public rebuke which they deserved." At this point the Hon. Robert C. Schenck said, "he understood his colleague as complaining that he had been charged with receiving a greater excess than he (Mr. Schenck) had done with receiving upwards of $200 excess, while I was charged to have received only $2.40." Mr. Sawyer assented. Well, then," said Mr. Schenck, " to relieve my colleague from the dilemma, I will swap with him." Sawyer subsided amid roars of laughter. But if Mr. Sawyer had run down, Mr. Thomas J. Turner, a Representative from Illinois, had just got himself well wound up, and consequently "rose to a question of privilege." This gentleman s "excess," according to the Expose, was the sum of $998.40, being only the trifle of $1.60 less than Horace Greeley s annual salary on The Jeffersonian newspaper a few years before. Mr. Turner was, therefore, very much in earnest. He was interrupted by several gentlemen, who explained that members did not charge their own mileage, but " the list," as published in The Tribune, had been made up by a committee, etc. Mr. Turner then went on, and having made an uncom monly abusive speech, concluded with offering a series of three resolutions. The first directed the Committee on Mileage to inquire whether any member of the House had received more mileage than he was by law entitled to, and if so, what amount. Also to report by what rule mileage is computed, by whom the claim is allowed, and upon what evidence. The second resolution was as follows: "Resolved, That a publication made in The New- York Tribune on the day of December, 1848, in which the mileage of members is set forth and commented on, be referred to a Committee, with instructions to inquire into and report whether said publication does not amount, in substance, to an allegation of fraud against most of the members of this House in this matter of their mileage; and, if, in the judgment of the Committee, it does amount to an allegation of fraud, then to inquire into it, and report whether that allegation is true or false." T ::: MILEAGE EXPOSE. 213 The third resolve empowered the Committee to send for persons and papers. Mr. Turner demanded the previous question, but subse quently withdrew the motion. Whereupon a member from Maryland, by the name of Alexander Evans, renewed it, and insisted upon it, but the House refused to second it; and in the midst of a scene of excitement rarely equalled in the old Hall of Representatives, Mr. Greeley proceeded to justify the Expose. The remainder of the debate is thus reported : Mr. Greeley, after alluding (in a manner not heard by the reporter) to the comments that had been made upon the article in The Tribune relative to the subject of mileage, and the abuses which had notoriously been prac ticed relative to it, said he had heard no gentleman quote one word in that article imputing an illegal charge to any member of this House, imputing anything but a legel, proper charge. The whole ground of the argument was this : Ought not the law to be changed ? Ought not the mileage to be settled by the nearest route, instead of what was called the usually travelled route, which authorized a gentleman coming from the centre of Ohio to go around by Sandusky, Albany, New- York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and to charge mileage upon that route. He did not object to any gentleman s taking that course if he saw fit ; but was that the route upon which the mileage ought to be computed ? Mr. Turner interposed, and inquired if the gentleman wrote that article? Mr. Greeley replied that the introduction to the article on mileage was written by himself; the transcript from the books of this House and from the accounts of the Senate was made by a reporter, at his direction. That reporter, who was formerly a clerk in the Post Office Department (Mr. Douglass Howard), had taken the latest book in the department, which contained the distances of the several post offices in the country from Washington; and from that book he had got honestly, he knew, though it might not have been entirely accurate in an instance or two the official list of the distances of the several post offices from this city. In every case, the post office of the member, whether of the Senate or the House, had been looked out, his distance as charged set down, then the post office book referred to; and the actual, honest distance by the shortest route set down opposite, and then the computation made how much the charge was an excess, not of legal mileage, but of what would be legal, if the mileage was computed by the nearest mail route. Mr. King, of Georgia, desired, at this point of the gentleman s remarks, to say a word: the gentleman said that the members charged; now, he (Mr. King) desired to say, with reference to himself, that from the first, he had always refused to give any information to the Committee on Mileage with respect to the mileage to which he would be entitled. He had told 214 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. them it was their special duty to settle the matter; that he would have nothing to do with it. He therefore had charged nothing. Mr. Greeley (continuing) said, he thought all this showed the necessity of a new rule on the subject, for here they saw members shirking off, shrinking from the responsibility, and throwing it from one place to an other. Nobody made up the account, but somehow an excess of sixty or seventy thousand dollars was charged in the accounts for mileage, and was paid from the treasury. Mr. King interrupted, and asked if he meant to charge him (Mr. King) with shirking? Was that the gentleman s remark? Mr. Greeley replied, that he only said that by some means or other, this excess of mileage was charged, and was paid by the treasury. This money ought to be saved. The same rule ought to be applied to members of Congress that was applied to other persons. Mr. King desired to ask the gentleman from New York if he had cor rectly understood his language, for he had heard him indistinctly? He (Mr. K.) had made the positive statement that he had never had anything to do with reference to the charge of his mileage, and he had understood the gentleman from New York to speak of shirking from responsibility. He desired to know if the gentleman applied that term to him ? Mr. Greeley said he had applied it to no member. Mr. King asked, why make use of this term, then ? Mr. Greeley s reply to this interrogatory was lost in the confusion which prevailed in consequence of members leaving their seats and coming for ward to the area in the centre. The Speaker called the House to order, and requested gentlemen to take their seats. Mr. Greeley proceeded. There was no intimation in the article that any member had made out his own account, but somehow or other the accounts had been so made up as to make a total excess of some $60,000 or $70,000, chargeable upon the treasury. The general facts had been stated to show that the law ought to be different, and there were several cases cited to show how the law worked badly ; for instance, from one district in Ohio, the member formerly charged for four hundred miles, when he came on his own horse all the way ; but now the member from the same district received mileage for some 800 or DOO miles. Now, ought that to be so? The whole argument turned on this: now, the distances were travelled much easier than formerly, and yet more, in many cases much more, mile age was charged. The gentleman from Ohio who commenced this discussion, had made the point that there was. some defect, some miscalcu lation in the estimate of distances. He could not help it; they had taken the post office books, and relied on them, and if any member of the press had picked out a few members of this House, and held up their charges for mileage, it would have been considered invidious. Mr. Turner called the attention of the member from New York to the fact, that the Postmaster General himself had thrown aside that post office DEBATE ON MILEAGE. 215 book, in consequence of its incorrectness. He asked the gentleman if he did not know that fact ? Mr. Greeley replied, that the article itself stated that the department did not charge mileage upon that book. Every possible excuse and mitigation had been given in the article ; but he appealed to the House they were the masters of the law why would they not change it, and make it more just and equal? Mr. Sawyer wished to be allowed to ask the gentleman from New York a question. His complaint was, that the article had done him injustice, by setting him down as some 300 miles nearer the seat of government than his colleague (Mr. Schenck) was, although his colleague had stated before the House, that he (Mr. Sawyer) resided some 60 or 70 miles further. Now, he wanted to know why the gentleman had made this calculation against him, and in favour of his colleague? Mr. Greeley replied, that he begged to assure the gentleman from Ohio that he did not think he had ever been in his thoughts from the day he had come here until the present day ; but he had taken the figures from the post office book, as transcribed by a former clerk in the Post Office Depart- ment. Mr. Sawyer said, if the gentleman had been as particular when he made out the statement as he was now, he (Mr. S.) would have been saved this trouble. But the article, whether intentionally or not, had done him injus tice, and therefore he had felt bound to call the attention of the House to the fact. Some conversation (which was too indistinctly heard, to be minutely reported) here took place between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Turner, with refer ence to the shortest distance of the latter gentleman s residence from the peat of Government; Mr. Turner stating that by an air-line the distance was greater than it had been put down in the newspaper article in ques tion, and repeating that the only modes of conveyance from his residence were by the lakes or by the rivers, and Mr. Greeley stating that Gen. Dodge, of Iowa, who had just taken his seat in the Senate, had come by another and more direct route; to which Mr. Turner replied that Gen. Dodge resided three hundred miles below him, and consequently he could take the southern route, while he (Mr. T.) could not. Mr. Greeley said, it must be obvious that no gentleman could go around inquiring into the mail routes, and guessing whether the distance of the residence of each member ought to be computed as great as it was put down in the post office book. All that he could do, was to direct the official list to be taken; he had made no alteration in it. He had felt it his duty to call the attention of the House and of the country to these abuses which existed in reference to the allowance of mileage to members of Congress. They were certainly gross abuses, and ought to be corrected. There was no imputation in the article upon any member, that he had made illegal charges ; but arguments and facts had been brought forward to show the necessity of altering the law.* 1 Congressional Globe, Vol. 20, p. 111. 216 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Abraham Lincoln moved for a division of the question, and the first two resolutions were adopted, the third rejected ; when the House settled down into its usual noise and confusion, for a moment, and then adjourned. But this did not end the mileage question. There were two or three more " field-days " in the House upon the subject. On the 9th of January, 1849, the Civil and Diplomatic appropria tion bill being before the House in committee of the whole, Mr. Embree, of Indiana, moved an amendment to the sum appropriated for compensation and mileage of Senators, Repre sentatives, and Delegates, the following: Provided, That the mileage of members of both Houses of Congress shall hereafter be estimated and charged upon the shortest mail route from their places of residence, respectively, to the city of Washington. . Hereupon there arose an excited debate, in which many members participated, Mr. Greeley receiving a great deal of obloquy. Mr. Amos Tuck, of New Hampshire, bravely and most ably sustained the amendment and upheld the course which had been taken by Mr. Greeley. Mr. Albert G. Brown, of Mississippi, made a bitter attack upon the writer of the Expose, but coming to close quarters with Mr. Tuck was sud denly placed hors de cotnbat. Mr. Brown w r as assailing the gentleman from New Hampshire upon another matter, when Mr. Tuck rose and requested the floor for an explanation. Mr. Brown, addressing the Chair, said, " He is a member, I believe?" Mr. Tuck instantly retorted: "It sometimes happens that a member takes such a course on this floor as to put it out of his power to insult another^ member." Mr. Brown dropped into his seat as though he had been shot, and- Mr. Tuck pro ceeded with his explanation. Mr. Root, of Ohio, made a lively speech, which kept the house roaring for an hour. He was opposed to Mr. Embree s amendment, and proposed to fix all this mileage muddle up by voting each member a dollar or so an hour while on the journey to Washington! He admitted that the present rate of mileage was enough in some instances, but would never make any man rich. One might do very well .as to mileage, where he could get on a boat at Brownsville and CONGRESSIONAL MILEAGE. 217 float down the river to the month of the Mississippi. As for himself, he came around by the lakes and New- York, because that was the most comfortable route; " and there is a great deal in this thing of being comfortable!" He also brought in a hit about "dead-heads. which did not happen to hit Mr. Greeley. but only a Pennsylvania member. In replying to Mr. Greeley s explanation on this point Mr. Root said: " The gentleman from New-York would do me the justice to admit that I had intended no personalities. All knew how I have been drawn into this conversation. I had given the gentle man credit for eight dollars and a fip in the omnibus." Mr. Haralson, of Georgia, obtained the floor, by the courtesy of Mr. Embree, and moved that the Committee rise. Mr. Gree ley asked him to withhold the motion, that he might, by the courtesy of Mr. Embree, make a brief reply to the allusions which had been made to him and his course upon this sub ject. He asked only for five minutes. But Mr. Haralson with marked discourtesy adhered to his motion, and the Committee rose, reporting >; no conclusion." Two days afterwards the subject came up again, and, after a speech by Mr. Venable, Mr. Greeley obtained the floor, and, amid frequent interruptions and unusual excitement in the House, advocated reform. Among those who interrupted him in the most insulting manner was Mr. Turner, of Illinois. To one of these interruptions, Mr. Greeley replied severely : "Now I shall use no such language; it is not used by gentle men in my section of the country." Though constantly " badgered," annoyed, insulted, Mr. Greeley kept his temper throughout, and even came off the victor over Mr. Schenck in a contest of wits. The following passages of Mr. Greeley s speech, though poorly reported, will show its general character: Now, let him (Mr. Greeley) reply to some of the remarks which the gentleman from Mississippi had seen fit to apply to him in the discussion yesterday. The gentleman had represented it as an abuse that an editor of a newspaper had a seat on this floor, and that he edited his paper from here. He (Mr. Greeley) presumed he had written less on this floor than most any other gentleman; certainly he had done no editorial writing here. There was time enough for that out of this House. And 218 LIFE OF HORACE GTCEELEY. besides attending to his duties on this floor and in the Committee-room, he had been absent but one day, and that a private-bill day, and a short session; and the chairman of the Committee on the Public Lands, of which he was a member, would tell the gentleman that he (Mr. G.) had not been absent from the meetings of that Committee, and that he had sought, rather than shunned, labour on that Committee. He believed the gentleman from Mississippi would find he (Mr. G.) would be disposed to do as much on this floor, or off of it, of his duties as a member of this House, as the gentleman would deem desirable. Now, what was the abuse! That he was the editor of a newspaper, was certainly true. That he had given away the time of the public to editing his paper, was not true. Here were lawyers who left their seats in this Hall for two or three weeks together, to attend to their practice. Of this he did not complain ; he did not do it ; he should devote his time to the discharge of the duties incumbent upon him, for the brief time he had to serve here. Now, as to this matter of the reform of mileage : Every gentleman who had spoken had admitted that the present system was wrong ; that there ought to be some change. Almost every one suggested some amendment. If the present amount paid was just, it ought to be more fairly distributed. He said it was unjust. But this was a beggarly sum. It was only some sixty or seventy thousand dollars saving. Did you ever know of reform, of retrenchment, that was not beggarly? Retrenchment was always a beggarly business ; it was not a business for a gentleman. Gentlemanly instincts shunned it as a rather low business as rather discreditable, even for editors. Reform when you will, it is always strike higher or lower, or it is something else that is to be amended an entirely different thing from that which you are attempting to do. The country would understand this ; he was entirely sure this House did understand it. It was the way, the gentlemanly way, never to mind the expense; go it lavishly ; divide, distribute to your friends even if you go ashore ; run in debt, repudiate, curse your creditors as descended from Judas Iscariot. But he was not rocked in the cradle of gentility. # # * * * * * * #* He believed that this was a matter demanding the attention of the House. He believed, that if they should begin by first making a reform which touched their own pockets, the natural effect would be to lead to other reforms; and these proper and judicious reforms being effected, the confidence of the country in this House would be increased, and the power of this House to do good immensely enhanced. He believed it was desirable in every way, that it would strengthen the confidence of the people in the Government, and lead them to feel that it was an equitable, a just Government; that they were assembled here to do justice to them selves and to every one else; that they would correct abuses which affected their own pockets. He knew not whether, under the Constitution, this reduction of mileage could be made to apply to the present Congress : if it could, so much the better. 4 4 The Congressional Globe, vol. 20, p. 320. "BATTLE or THE BOOKS." 219 It is worthy of remark that the rage manifested against Mr. Greeley by the members of the House was generally in pro portion to their " excess " of mileage. The reform of the law which he had in view was defeated, but " the usual routes of travel" were henceforth very much less "circuitous" than they had been, and some years afterwards the rate of mileage was reduced fifty per cent., and constructive mileage utterly prohibited. A long, long range had Mr. Greeley s gun, but it hit the target at last. Meantime, however, Mr. Greeley paid attention to a great many things besides that which had brought forth so much crimination aud recrimination. Some time before the holidays he had introduced a resolution calling upon the Secretary of the Treasury to communicate to the House the considera tions of equity or public policy which justify the assessment by the tariff of 1846, on woollen blankets, flannels, blaizes, etc., and on hempen cables, cordage, and several other descrip tions of imported manufactures of rates of duty five to ten per cent, lower than are charged on the principal raw material from which they are respectively fabricated; and if the same be not justified as aforesaid, what action of Congress in relation thereto is deemed by him desirable. The consideration of this resolution came up early in January, and Mr. "Wentworth, of Illinois, proceeded to say with much force that Congress had passed the tariff act of 1846, and with characteristic straight forwardness that he "had had as much to do with passing that law as the Secretary of the Treasury had had." A quite animated debate between Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Greeley fol lowed, and Mr. Wentworth s motion to lay the resolution on the table was at first defeated by a majority of one vote, but afterwards prevailed. Mr. Greeley appears to have gained the point he aimed at, however, namely, to show that the tariff of 1846 had been mainly dictated to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury. And herein he was handsomely assisted by his friend and colleague, Mr. Washington Hunt. On the 23d of January occurred the famous "Battle of the Books," making even a more exciting debate than any called forth by the Congressional Mileage Expos6. For two hours 220 LIFE OF HORACE GREKLKY. the Hall was it scene of excitement which was never equalled except upon some occasions when the discussion of the slavery question converted the House into a mob of vociferous, angry, unreasonable men, many of them anxious for personal ren contres. In this Battle of the Books, though Mr. Greeley was most unexpectedly assailed by a member whom he had regarded as his friend, and though many of the members heartily hated him on account of his exposure of their mileage ways that were dark and tricks that were vain , yet did he bear himself throughout the fierce conflict with imperturbable cool ness; and repelled the premeditated, cunningly-devised, and malicious assault in such way as must have left its originators blistering and burning with shame for many a day. The House being in Committee of the Whole (the Hon. Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, in the Chair), on the General Appropriation Bill, had considered a variety of subjects, and was about to rise, when Mr. Edwards, of Ohio, moved an amendment (sham) to the effect that the sums of money appro priated in the bills for books be deducted from the pay of members voting for the appropriation. He then read a brief report from The Tribune of a speech made a few days before by Mr. Greeley, in which he denied that he had voted for the appropriation for the books. Mr. Edwards now undertook to browbeat Mr. Greeley, and to involve him in humiliating contradiction. After considerable sparring, he said : " I under stand, then, that the gentleman from J^ew York voted without understanding what he was voting upon, and that he would have voted against taking the books had he not been mis taken." To this Mr. Greeley assented. " I assert," responded Mr. Edwards, "that that declaration is unfounded in fact. I have the proof that the gentleman justified his vote both before and after the voting." The House now became deeply inter ested and rapidly grew into a paroxysm of excitement. Mem bers were sure that at last the Great Exposer was going to be himself exposed in no desirable plight, There had indeed been an informal meeting of members of very circuitous routes of travel, who considered the propriety of a movement to expel the audacious originator of the great popular indigna- " BATTLE OF THE BOOKS." 221 tion. Upon a shrewd suggestion from Mr. Wentworth, that that thing would make Horace Greeley President," the expul sion plan was abandoned. So now members gathered around Mr. Edwards, urging him to name his witnesses. He named three members of the House. And then Mr. Vinton, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, made a statement as to how the appropriation had been made, which brought about comparative calm. Mr. Greeley followed, asking that the members called upon might make their statements. They did so, two of them apparently sustaining Mr. Edwards, the other not. Mr. Edwards then justified his vote on reasons similar to those which, he said, justified Mr. Greeley s vote; and then launched into the circuitous route!" He was stopped by the Chairman, and Mr. Greeley explained the mistake that had been made, but stated that he had before, and now approved the appropriation. "Why, then," asked Mr. Edwards, "did you make the denial in The Tribune, and say that you voted against it?" "I did vote against it," said Mr. Greeley. "I did not vote for it, because I did not choose to have some sort of gentlemen on this floor hawk at me." Mr. Edwards was one of the sort of gentlemen who did not hawk at him any more. 5 On the 25th, two days after the book war, Mr. Greeley made an earnest speech in attack of the cruelties practiced in the recruiting service, and in favour of a reduction of the expendi tures for the army. A few days afterwards he also spoke in advocacy of retrenchment in the navy. But the only speech by him, which was fully reported, was that delivered on Febru ary 26th, on the bill to provide a Territorial Government for California. On the following day he made a speech on the bill organizing Xew Mexico as a Territory, which was reported with tolerable fullness. He offered an amendment to one of these bills, and, speaking in advocacy thereof, was interrupted by Mr. Kaufman, of Texas, who, with that singular courtesy so often extended to Mr. Greeley, "wished to inquire of the gen tleman from New York whether, by the introduction of the 6 This whole affair will be found in full, as officially reported, in the Appendix to this volume; as will, also, it may here be stated, several of Mr. Greeley s speeches and extended remarks in Congress. 222 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. amendment which he had offered, he wanted to steal from Texas land enough for his Fourierite bill to operate upon?" Whereupon Mr. Greeley said: "I do not think it becomes the Representative from Texas to talk about land-stealing." And Mr. Kaufman dropped the subject. Mr. Greeley was a constant attendant upon the sessions of the House; a conscientious worker both in the Hall and Com mittee-room. He did all that one man could to conduct legislative business with dispatch and efficiency. He often demanded the yeas and nays on motions to adjourn over, and called general attention to the waste of time which was con stantly going on. Almost every day he introduced petitions "for cheap postage and no franking;" for the reform of the mileage abuse; for other measures, then unpopular, fairly odious in the House, now, many of them, incorporated into the settled policy of the Republic. It may well be concluded that he was a thorn in the side of the " old soldier " Representa tive. He was perpetually stirring up things a knowledge whereof did not redound to the credit of many of those " old soldiers " as men of honour or statesmen of capacity. Besides his speeches on the tariff question, and other topics of general interest, he inaugurated the reform of mileage; cheap postage; abolition of the franking privilege; the policy of free home steads to actual settlers, his despised "Fourierite bill,"- receiving his vote alone, becoming the most popular law of the land. If the ripe harvest of the seeds sown by Horace Greeley during his brief membership of the House of Repre sentatives be estimated as the fruit of his statesmanship, it might justly be claimed that he accomplished as much in a single short session as not a few of the most eminent of our public men have been able to accomplish in a lifetime. After his membership, no more journeys to Congress by way of Good Hope! Cheap postage soon followed. Lands for the landless became the fixed policy of the nation. And now, in the administration of President Grant, Horace Greeley s " pet reform" against franking, is accomplished. Mr. Greeley s last night in Congress was, as is usual, one of uproar, and attempts to carry questionable measures, too often A LAST NIGHT OF CONGEESS. 223 resulting in success, as was the case on this memorable night, notwithstanding his exertions against the allowance of expen sive perquisites. But the disturbance on this occasion came near amounting to "a free fight." Mr. Greeley gives his recollections of this last night of the Thirtieth Congress in these words: " The last night of a session is usually a long one ; and ours was not only long, but excited. The two Houses were at variance : The House desiring (at least, voting) to prohibit the introduction of Slavery into the vast territories just then acquired from Mexico ; the Senate dissenting from that policy. Of course, we who voted for the restriction could not carry it through nor over the Senate. But that body was not content to stand on the defensive; it attached to the great Civil and Diplomatic Appropri ation bill (since divided) a provision for the organization of the new Territories, of course, without the restriction against Slavery, and, in effect, said to us, You shall agree to this, or the new [Taylor] Adminis tration shall not have a dollar to spend after the 1st of July ensuing. We had one or two conferences by committee ; but neither House would give way. Finally, the bill came back to us on this last evening, the Senate insisting on its Territorial amendment. Each side had rallied in full force (there were but three of all the representatives chosen from the Slave States who were not in their seats), and we were morally certain to be beaten on a motion to recede, three or four weak brethren changing their votes rather than leave the Government penniless ; when some one on our side I believe it was Richard W. Thompson of Indiana got in a motion to concur, with an amendment. This amendment accepted the Senate s project of organizing the new Territories, barely adding a stipulation that the existing laws thereof should remain in forw till changed by consent of Con gress. (The existing laws were those of Mexico, and forbade Slavery.) This motion prevailed (as I recollect the vote on one important division stood one hundred and eleven to one hundred and ten), and completely changed the whole aspect of the matter. The pro-Slavery men were now as anxious to expunge the Territorial clause as they had previously been determined to insert it at all hazards ; and the Senate struck out its cher ished provision, and let the Appropriation bill pass as it originally was, leaving the question of Slavery in the new Territories as a legacy of trouble to the incoming Administration. Never was a parliamentary move more clever than that motion to concur, with an amendment. When it had been carried through our House, and while the Senate was chewing upon it, there ensued a hiatus or interregnum, the House having really nothing to do but wait. At such times, any member who has a pet project or bill asks a suspension of the rules in favour of its consideration. Among these motions was one by Mr. Robert W. Johnson of Arkansas, who wished the House to consider a bill providing payment for horses lost Dy his constituents while acting as volunteers in Indian wars. His motion 224 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. to suspend the rules failed; when I drew from my drawer a resolve, which had lain there for weeks, proposing that our country take the general name of COLUMBIA, in honour of the great discoverer. I was making a few remarks introductory to my motion to suspend the rules, which I knew would be defeated, when, as the affair was afterward explained tome, Mr. Johnson turned upon Mr. O. B. Ficklin of Illinois, who sat very near him, and angrily said : Ficklin, why do you always oppose any motion I make ? I did not oppose your motion, was the prompt and true reph". You lie, rejoined Johnson, whose powers of observation were not then in their best estate, and he sprang forward as though to clutch Ficklin ; when Mr. Samuel W. Inge of Alabama, rushed upon the latter, and struck him two or three blows with a cane. Order ! Order ! Ser- geant-at-arms, do your duty! interposed the Speaker; and the affray was promptly arrested. Why, Inge, what did you fall upon Ficklin for? inquired one of his neighbours; Ficklin being an intensely pro-Slavery Democrat, as were Inge and Johnson. AVhy, I thought, explained Inge, that the fight between the North and the South had commenced, and I might as well pitch in. I did not hear him say this; but it was reported to me directly afterward, and I have no doubt that he said and thought so. " Mr. Giddings went over to the Democratic side of the House that night, and made some jocular remark to an acquaintance on the change of aspect since we had made and sustained our motion to concur, with an amendment, when he was assaulted, and was glad to get away quite rapidly. I am confident I could not have passed quietly through that side of the House between ten and two o clock of that night without being assaulted; and, had I resisted, beaten within an inch of my life, if not killed outright. Yet I had proposed nothing, said nothing, on the exciting topic ; I was obnoxious only because I was presumed earnestly hostile to Slavery. " I believe it was just 7 A. M. of the 4th of March, 1849, the day of General Taylor s inauguration, when the two Houses, having finished all the inevitable business of the session, were adjourned without day, and I walked down to my hotel, free thenceforth to mind my own business. I have not since been a member, nor held any post under the Federal Gov ernment; it is not likely that I shall ever again hold one; yet I look back upon those three months I spent fn Congress as among the most profitably employed of any in the course of my life. I saw things from a novel point of view; and, if I came away from the Capitol no wiser than I went thither, the fault was entirely my own." B The Congress in which Horace Greeley thus served for the brief period of three months contained many distinguished men in either branch. Webster, Calhoun, Clayton, Benton, Corwin, Douglas, and others of illustrious name were in the Senate. Mr. Greeley, however, was so constant in his attend- 6 Recollections of a Busy Life, pp. 231-32. JOSHUA K. GEDDINaS. 225 ance upon the House that he saw little of the Senate. Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was the Speaker, a gentle man of acknowledged ability, rare culture, imposing presence. Few men have occupied the presiding chair of the boisterous House with greater dignity or greater credit. Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, afterwards the illustrious President, was a member and specially friendly with Mr. Greeley. Mr. Lincoln seemed, said Mr. Greeley, "a quiet, good-natured man, did not aspire to leadership, and seldom claimed the floor. I think he made but one set speech during that session, and this speech was by no means a long one. Though a strong partizan, he voted against the bulk of his party once or twice, when that course was dictated by his convictions. He was one of the most moderate, though firm, opponents of Slavery Extension, and notably of a buoyant, cheerful spirit, It will surprise some to hear that, though I was often in his company thence forward till his death, and long on terms of friendly intimacy with him, I never heard him tell an anecdote or story." Mr. Greeley was appointed a member of the Committee on Public Lands, of which the Hon. Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, was Chairman. Mr. Collamer was then as ever fully entitled to " the grand old name of gentleman." Of a generous, chiv- alric nature, firm in his own opinions, most respectful of the opinions of others; with a fine presence and fascinating con versational powers, he was as admirably adapted to receive the respect of man and the love of woman as almost any of his cotemporaries among public men. He rose to great distinc tion in the republic, being highly successful and celebrated both in the executive and legislative branches of government, but it was as a companion in quiet conversation that he won the deepest affection of those who knew him best. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, since the then recent death of John Quincy Adams, was the most noted champion of anti- Slavery in the House; and anti-Slavery had not yet begun to be popular. Mr. Giddings was an agitator, and he long ap peared to the public, quite generally opposed to the agitation of the subject of slavery, as an exceedingly unamiable and rather disreputable character. On the contrary, he was a per- 15 22G LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. son of an unusually large and warm heart, and of refined feelings. He and Mr. Greeley were great friends from the beginning. Mr. Giddings, however, was fond of some amuse ments and pleasures, deemed innocent by himself and most men, for which Mr. Greeley had neither time nor inclination. " Sundry attempts at reforming what were considered abuses," says Mr. Greeley, "were made that Winter, but without bril liant success. We tried to abolish flogging in the Navy, but were beaten. I think it was Mr. (now General) Schenck who raised a laugh against us by proposing so to amend that the com mander of a ship of war should never order a sail spread or reefed without calling all hands and taking a vote of his crew on the question. We were temporarily successful in voting in Committee to stop dealing out strong drink to the sailors and marines in our Navy, though this, too, was ultimately defeated; but, in the first flush of our delusive triumph, a member sitting near me, who had voted to stop the grog ration, said to a friend who (I believe) had voted the same way, Gid, that was a glorious vote we have just taken. Yes, glorious, was the ready response. Gid, resumed the elated reformer, let us go and take a drink on the strength of it. Agreed, was the willing echo; and they went." Robert C. Schenck, here referred to, since celebrated as a general and diplomatist, was at this time in the prime of his manhood, lie had a robust frame, a powerful voice, and magnificent pluck. lie was an orator of great powers of per suasion, and one of the keenest, most brilliant disputants of the House in a running debate. Of great good-nature ordi narily, he was capable of "as daring flights of wrath as of eloquence; but hninorr predominated in his mind when not aroused, and, next to his colleague in this House, Mr. Joseph M. Root, of the Cleveland district, Mr. Schenck was chargeable with more of the wit of the session than almost any other member. If Mr. Schenck were an admirable specimen of Western vigour, dash, and parliamentary ability, taking captive Mr. Greelcy s hearty admiration, he found in the captivating gcn- tlemaniiuess and ripe scholarship of Horace Mann, of Muasa- FELLOW-MEMBERS OF CONGRESS. 227 chnsetts, qualities which won his devoted friendship no less effectively. As Congress was then constituted, and as it still is constituted, the more s the pity, Horace Mann was there out of his element. Among the members of the opposition, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, afterwards President of the United States, became as well known as any other to Mr. Greeley. Mr. Johnson at this time had not won wide distinction; but he was recognized in the House as a man of strong mind and strong will, and none who knew him then, or ever afterwards, doubted his manly and unpurchasable personal integrity. George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, was then among New England s most eminent Representatives. He presided over the convention which, twelve years afterwards, nominated Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency. A more admirable, efficient presiding officer but few deliberative bodies have ever been fortunate enough to select. Here, too, as we have already seen, was John Wentworth, of Illinois, then of the Democratic party. Gigantic in form, he was universally called "Long John," and retains the designation to this day. A skilful debater, an able parliamentarian, he was better liked by Mr. Greeley than any other one of the opposition. Here also Mr. Greeley daily met Ilowell Cobb, of Georgia, Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, Alexander II. Stephens, of Georgia, Robert Toombs, of the same State noted Southerners then, more noted afterwards as prominent leaders in the war of the rebel lion against the Union. Richard "VV. Thompson, of Indiana, and George "W. Jones, of Tennessee, impressed Mr. Greeley as among the most effective speakers of the House. He thought John Si Pendleton, of Virginia, a splendid specimen of the Southern gentleman, but no finer than Abraham W. Venable, of North Carolina. Mr. R. Barnwell Rhett was a member of the House, but already too much of a. " fire-eater " to be received with marked hospitality by the editor of The Tribune. He greatly liked Green Adams, of Kentucky, John M. Botts, of Virginia, both of whom became somewhat celebrated in poli- fics, the latter having already, indeed, a national reputation. James Dixon and Truman Smith were in the House from Con- 228 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. necticnt, both afterwards many years in the Senate. Of his own colleagues, "Washington Hunt and Frederick A. Tallmadge were the most distinguished. On the evening of March 6th, Mr. Greeley, in full dress, attended the Inauguration Ball, which he perceived was " a sweaty, seething, sweltering jam, a crowd of duped foregather- ers from all creation." In his letter to the Tribune, he thus speaks of the ball, of the new President, General Taylor, and of Henry Clay: " I went to sec the new President, who had not before come within my contracted range of vision, and to mark the reception accorded to him by tbe assembled thousands. I came to gaze on stately heads, not nimble feet, and for an hour have been content to gaze on the flitting phantas magoria of senatorial brows and cpauletted shoulders of orators arid brunettes, office-seekers and beauties. I have had something too much of this, and lo! the hour of hours has come the buzz of expectation subsides into a murmur of satisfaction the new President is descending the grand stairway which terminates in the ball-room, and the human mass forms in two deep columns to receive him. Between these, General Taylor, supported on cither hand, walks through the long saloon and back through other like columns, bowing and greeting with kind familiarity those on this side and on that, paying especial attention to the ladies as is fit, and everywhere welcomed in turn with the most cordial good wishes. All wish him well in his new and arduous position, even those who struggled hardest to prevent his reaching it. "But, as at the Inauguration, there is the least possible enthusiasm. Now and then a cheer is attempted, but the result is so nearly a failure that the daring leader in the exploit is among the first to laugh at the miscarriage. There is not a bit of heart in it. " They don t seem to cheer with much unction, I remarked to a Taylor original. " Ne-e-o, they don t cheer much, he as faintly replied ; there is a good deal of doubt as to the decorum of cheering at a social ball. "True enough : the possibility of indecorum was sufiicient to check the impulse to cheer, and very few passed the barrier. The cheers stuck in the throat, like Macbeth s Amen, and the proprieties of the occasion were well cared for. "But just imagine Old Hal walking down that staircase, the just inaugurated President of the United States, into the midst of three thou sand of the dlite of the beauty and chivalry of the Whig party, and think how the rafters would have quivered with the universal acclamation. Just think of some one stopping to consider whether it might not be indecorous to cheer on such an occasion ! What a solitary hermit that considercr would be ! ADDRESS TO OONSTITUENTa 220 " Let those who will, flatter the chief dispenser of Executive patronage, discovering in every act and feature some resemblance to Washington I am content to wait, and watch, and hope. I burn no incense on his altar, attach no flattering epithets to his name. I turn from this imposing pageant, so rich in glitter, so poor in feeling, to think of him who sJwuld have been the central figure of this grand panorama the distant, the powerless, the unforgotten behind the mountains, but not setting the eloquent champion of Liberty in both hemispheres whose voice thrilled the hearts of the uprising, the long-trampled sons of Lconidas and Xeno- phon whose appeals for South American independence were read to the hastily mustered squadrons of Bolivar, and nerved them to sweep from this fair continent the myrmidons of Spanish oppression. My heart is with him in his far southern abiding-place with him, the early advocate of African Emancipation ; the life-long champion of a diversified Home Industry; of Internal Improvement; and not less glorious in his later years as the stern reprover of the fatal spirit of conquest and aggression. Let the exulting thousands quaff their red wines at the revel to the victor of Monterey and Bucna Vista, while wit points the sentiment with an epigram, and beauty crowns it with her smiles: more grateful to me the stillness of my lonely chamber, this cup of crystal water in which I honour the cherished memory with the old, familiar aspiration Hero s to you, Elarry Clay ! " A day or; two afterwards Mr. Grcclcy returned to New- York, where he prepared an address to his constituents in which he reviewed the principal proceedings of the session, and the work generally of the Thirtieth Congress, thinking it, upon the whole, much of a failure. This address concluded as follows: "My work as your servant is done whether well or ill it remains for you to judge. Very likely I gave the wrong vote on some of the difficult and complicated questions to which I was called to respond Ay or No with hardly a moment s warning. If so, you can detect and condemn the error; for my name stands recorded in the divisions by Yeas and Nays on every public and all but one private bill (which was laid on the table the moment the sitting opened, and on which my name had just been passed as I entered the Hall). I wish it were the usage among us to publish less of speeches and more of propositions and votes thereupon it would give the mass of the people a much clearer insight into the management of their public affairs. My successor being already chosen and commis sioned, I shall hardly bo suspected of seeking your further kindness, and I shall be heartily rejoiced if he shall be able to combine equal zeal in your service -with greater efficiency equal fearlessness with greater popularity. That I have been somewhat annoyed at times by some of the consequences of my Mileage Expose is true, but I have never wished to 230 LIFE OB 1 HOKACK GKKKLEY. recall it, nor have I felt that I owed an apology to any, and I am quite confident, that if you had sent to Washington (as you doubtless might have done) a more sternly honest and fearless Representative, he would have made himself more unpopular with a large portion of the House than I did. I thank you heartily for the glimpse of public life which your favour has afforded me, and hope to render it useful henceforth not to myself, only bi}t to the public. In ceasing to be your agent, and return- ing with renewed zest to my private cares and duties, I have a single additional favour to ask, not of you especially, but of all; and I am sure my friends at least will grant it without hesitation. It is that you and they will oblige me henceforth by remembering that my name is simply " IIOllACE GUEELEY." Twenty years afterwards, Mr. Greeley, in his " Recollections of a Busy Life," 7 spoke of Congress as it bad been, when he was a member, and as it was when he wrote that work, in these words: " I do not imply that legislation, whether in Congress or elsewhere, is purer and cleaner now than it Avas twenty or forty years ago. On the con- trary, I judge that it is oftencr swayed, to the prejudice of the public interest, by considerations of personal advantage, and that the evil tends strongly to increase and diffuse itself. The chartering of railroads through public lands which are required (as is clearly just) to contribute to their construction,, whether by liberal grants of territory or by direct subsidies in cash, and many kindred devices for promoting at once public and private, prosperity, have strongly tended to render legislation mercenary, whether in Congress, in State Legislatures, or in Municipal Councils. When I was in the House, there were ten or twelve members not more than twelve, I am confident who were generally presumed to be on the make, as the phrase is; and they were a class by themselves, as clearly as if they were so many black sheep in a large flock of white ones. I would gladly believe that this class lias not since increased in numbers or in impudence ; but the facts do not justify that presumption." 1 Tagc 234. CHAPTER XIV. VISITS EUROPE. Crossing the Atlantic The Great Exhibition at London A Juror Sight-seeing Mr. Greeley s Opinion of London Ills Opinion of the English and American Press Visits Paris Views of Parisian Morals and Social Life Predicts the Stability of the Republic Journey to Lyons Palaces and Potatoes Proceeds to Italy Sardinia Home St. Peter s and the Coliseum The People Journey to Venice Switzerland Germany Belgium Paris Again Returns to London Glances at Scotland and Ireland Opinion of the English People Home. MR. GREELET had now laboured constantly, greatly, on The Tribune for the lull period of ten years. lie had also done his fair share of lecturing and public speaking, and was entitled to a rest. He had earned the right to "go a-fishing." He accordingly determined to visit Europe, early in 1851 the year of the Great Exhibition, or World s Fair, at London. He left New- York at noon of April 1C, on the good steamship Baltic. Sea-sickness is an ailment of the brain, which becomes perturbed and disturbed, and, as it cannot get out anywhere, being coniined by the skull, the stomach fraternally sym pathizes, and gets very sick too. During the first hour after seizure, the patient fears he will die, and then he begins to fear that he will not! Such is the most truthful description of this complaint I have seen. The Baltic had not got five miles off Sandy Hook, before Mr. Greeley was " a decided case," and he remained a decided case during about the whole of the voyage, the weather being constantly bad and the sea rough. lie conceived a great disgust for the authors of "A Life on the Ocean Wave," "The Sea! the Sea! the Open Sea!" and such nonsense, and emphatically asseverated that " a home on the raging deep " is not a scene of enjoyment even to the sailor. 232 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. About the only notable incidents of the passage across the Atlantic were an iceberg seen to the northward one morning about sunrise (Mr. Greeley being below deck); a single school of whales (about which he heard); and a few vessels. "But there were days," he says, * wherein we saw no sail but our own; and I think we traversed nearly a thousand miles at one time on this great highway of nations without seeing one." Stopping not at Liverpool, Mr. Greeley hastened on to the Great Metropolis in order to be present at the opening of The World s Fair, on the 1st of May. He witnessed this magnifi cent pageant with evident pleasure, as an exhibition of royal display, and with a dissatisfaction that he did not attempt to conceal, on account of its being the poorest possible occasion for the show of so much fuss and feathers. u The Queen, we will say," he writes in a letter to The Tribune, "was here by Right Divine, by right of Womanhood, by Universal Suffrage any how you please. The ceremonial could not have spared her. But in inaugurating the first grand olympiad of Indus try, ought not Industry to have had some representation, some vital recognition, in her share of the pageant? If the Queen had come in state to the Horse Guards to review the Jlite of her military forces, no one would doubt that the Duke should figure in the foreground, with a brilliant staff of Generals and Colonels surrounding him. So, if she were proceeding to open Parliament, her fitting attendants would be Ministers and Counsellors of State. But what have her Gentlemen Usher of Sword and State, Lords in Waiting, Master of the Horse, 1 Earl Marshal, Groom of the Stole, Master of the Buck- hounds, and such uncouth fbssils, to do with a grand Exhibi tion of the fruits of Industry? What, in their official capacity, have these and theirs ever had to do with Industry unless to burden it, or with its Products but to consume or destroy them? The Mistress of the Robes would be in place if she ever fashioned any robes, even for the Queen; so would the Ladies of the Bedchamber, if they did anything with beds except to sleep in them. As the fact is, their presence only served to strengthen the presumption that not merely their offices but Royalty itself is an anachronism, and all should have deceased GEW-GAWS AND REAPERS. with the era to which they properly belonged. * To have ren dered the pageant expressive, congruous, and really a tribute to Industry, the posts of honour next the Queen s person should have been confided on this occasion to the children of "Watt, of Arkwright, and their compeers (Xapoleon s real con querors); while instead of grandees and Foreign Ambassadors, the heirs of Fitch, of Fulton, of Jacquard, of Whitney, of Daguerre, etc., with the discoverers, architects, and engineers to whom the world is primarily indebted for Canals, Railroads, Steamships, Electric Telegraphs, etc., etc., should have been specially invited to swell the Royal cortege." Mr. Greeley was glad to see the Queen, however, and espe cially her husband, who had done so much for the Fair. For the Crystal Palace he expressed unbounded admiration, think ing the triumph of Paxton, its architect, perfect, and heralding a revolution. " Depend on it," said he, " stone and timber will have to stand back for iron and glass hereafter, to an extent not yet conceivable." Of the Exhibition itself he spoke in the highest terms. The space allotted to America for arti cles was not filled, whereupon The Times, Punch, and other journals went to disparaging the contributions of the United States on account of their meagreness and poverty. This was characterized by Mr. Greeley as " meanly invidious and unde served." It was chiefly by reason of his own efforts that a gratifying change took place HI the current of opinion with regard to American invention and its results. The triumph of our ploughs and reapers was universally acknowledged, while Mr. Hobbs, an American bank-lock manufacturer, went through all the locks, "the invincible Chubb " inclusive, with great ease and dispatch. In gew-gaws, tissues, dainty carv ings, rich mosaics, and articles of finery, the American portion of the Exhibition did not, of course, compare with that of many countries of Europe. But, as Mr. Greeley said, " One such plain, odd-looking concern as McCormick s Reaper, though it makes no figure in the eyes of mere sight-seers, in compari son with an inlaid table or a case of Paris bonnets, is of more practical account than a Crystal Palace full of those, and so will ultimately be regarded." And thus London and the world e 23-1 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELET. became convinced that tlie American department of the Exhi bition, though less showy than others, was nobly creditable to the inventive genius and practical skill of our country men. When Mr. Greeley reached London, he found that he had been selected as Juror representing the United States in the Jury on Hardware, of which he was chosen Chairman. His duties in this position required much time and labour which he cheerfully gave. They enabled him to see much more of the Exhibition and to come in contact with more eminent persons than might otherwise have happened. The Duke of Wellington the Duke, then more than eighty years old was a privileged visitor of the Crystal Palace during morning hours, when the Juries were making their examinations. Him Mr. Greeley often met, and describes him as " simply and eminently a gentleman," and one of the first to proclaim the eminent and remarkable success of the American quarter, while the London journals were jeering at the alleged poverty and shabbiness of the department. The journals changed their tune. The Duke of Argyle he describes as "a small, slight, sandy-haired person, gentle in manner, modest in bearing." He mentions very few of the English nobility, however; and it is perfectly clear that for persons of rank, merely as such, he had no respect, giving his admiration to men of personal merit, of whatever station. One of the privileges enjoyed by Mr. Greeley on account of his chairmanship of an Awarding Jury, was an invitation to a banquet given the commissioners of foreign countries at Rich mond, over which Lord Ashburton presided, and which was attended by many persons of "rank and those distinguished in science and letters from many portions of the world. "The feast," says Mr. Greeley, "was of course superb; the speaking fair; the music abundant and faultless. Good songs were capitally given by eminent vocalists; well sustained by instru ments, between the several toasts with their responses a fashion which 1 suggest for adoption in our own country, especially with the condition that the speeches be shortened to give time for the songs." The speakers were Lords Ash- burton and Granville, Messrs. Grace and Paxton, of England, ETEECn AT THE WORLD S FAIR BASQUES 235 Baron Dupin, of France, Messrs. Van de Weyer, of Belgium, Yon Yiebhan, of Prussia, and Horace Greeley. Mr. Greeley had gone to the banquet at the pressing request of Lord Ash- burton, who desired that an American should propose the health of Mr. Paxton, and Mr. Riddle, Commissioner of the United States, had designated him for that service, lie spoke about five minutes, as follows: " In iny own land, my lords and gentlemen, where Nature is still so rugged and unconqucred, where Population is yet so scanty and the demands for human exertion arc so various and urgent, it is hut natural that we should render marked honour to Labour, and especially to those who hy invention or discovery contribute to shorten the processes and increase the efficiency of Industry. It is but natural, therefore, that this grand conception of a comparison of the state of Industry in all Nations, by means of a World s Exhibition, should there have been received and canvassed with a lively and general interest, an interest which is not measured by the extent of our contributions. Ours is still one of the youngest of Nations, with few large accumulations of the fruits of manu facturing activity or artistic skill, and these so generally needed for use that we were not likely to send them three thousand miles away, merely for show. It is none the less certain that ihe progress of this great Exhi bition, from its original conception to that perfect real i/.at ion which we here commemorate, has been watched and discussed not more earnestly throughout the saloons of Europe, than by the smith s forge and the mechanic s bench in America. Especially the hopes and fears alternately predominant on this side with respect to the edifice required for the exhi bition the doubts as to the practicability of erecting one sufficiently capacious and commodious to contain and display the contributions of the whole world the apprehension that it could not be rendered impervi ous to water the confident assertions that it could not be completed in season for opening the Exhibition on the first of May as promised all found an echo on our shores; and now the tidings that all these doubts have been dispelled, these difficulties removed, will have been hailed there with unmingled satisfaction. "I trust, gentlemen, that among the ultimate fruits of this Exhibition we arc to reckon a wider and deeper appreciation of the worth of Labour, and especially of those Captains of Industry by whose conceptions and achievements our Race is so rapidly being borne onward in its progress to a loftier and more benignant destiny. We shall not be likely to appreciate less fully the merits of the wise Statesmen by whose measures a People s thrift and happiness are promoted of the brave Soldier, who joyfully pours out his blood in defense of the rights or in vindication of the honour of his Country of the Sacred Teacher, by whose precepts and example our steps arc guided in the pathway to heaven if we render fit honour 236 LIFE OF HORACE QREELEY. also to those Captains of Industry whose tearless victories redden no river and whose conquering march is unmarked by the tears of the widow and the cries of the orphan. I give you, therefore, "Tlie Health of Joseph Paxton, Esq., Designer of the Crystal Palace Honour to him whose genius does honour to Industry and Man !" This speech, so admirable in tone and happy in expression, was not included in the newspaper report of the banquet, nor was Mr. Greeiey s presence even mentioned! Whether the cause of this omission was the genuinely democratic; spirit of the speech, without a shadow of reference to kings, lords, and such things, or w r hatever was the reason, it gave Mr. Greeley a fair opportunity to demolish a recent boast of The Times that the clear English papers were superior to the cheap American press in fidelity in reporting. Mr. Greeley also attended the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, where he listened to addresses in severe condemnation of American Slavery and unmixed glorification of England. The orators were two negroes, one from New- York, the other from Boston. By the time they were done, Mr. Greeley " was very ready to accept the Chair man s invitation to say a few words." In doing so, he urged upon British Abolitionists: 1. Energetic and systematic exertions to increase the reward of Labour and the comfort and consideration of the depressed Labouring Class here at home; and to diifuse and cherish respect for Man, as Man, without regard to class, colour, or vocation. 2. Determined efforts for the eradication of those Social ills here which are appealed to and relied on by slaveholders and their champions as justi fying the continuance of slavery. 3. The colonization of the American Slave States by thousands of moral, industrious, intelligent free Labourers. An excellent speech certainly and a timely, but it threw a very large wet blanket over the excessive self-complacency produced by the preceding oratory. He greatly enjoyed the annual festival of the "Ancient and Honourable Company of Fishmongers." which was a sump tuous entertainment not only, but attended by a number of distinguished persons whom he was gratified to know. Among THE POOR OF LONDON. 237 these were Thomas ISToon Talfourd, author of "Ion," Dr. Lushington, Lord Palmerston, and Joseph Hume. An agree- ahle evening was spent with Eobert Owen, now celebrating his eightieth birthday, still a hale and hearty man. Mr. Greeley attended a play given at the town house of the Duke of Devonshire, in aid of The Guild of Literature and Art, a society then recently established with the object of making some provision for unfortunate authors and artists. The play given was Bulwer s "Jsot so Bad as we Seem, writ ten expressly in aid of the "Guild." The male performers were literary amateurs, the ladies being actresses by profession. Charles Dickens had the principal character, Douglas Jerrold representing a young Mr. Softhead, "and seemed quite at home in the character." It was better played than Dickens s; but in a comic afterpiece the great novelist came out splen didly. " I am sure," said Mr. Greeley, " the raw material of a capital comedian was put to a better use when Charles Dickens took to authorship." Horace Greeley could not be long .in London without look ing into the condition of the Labouring Classes and of the Poor. He believed that he saw day-break of the future of Labour in certain cooperative establishments of the great metropolis; and these he visited and studied with as much attention as his time would allow. He thus visited the original Model Lodging- House, in the heart of St. Giles s; a "Working Association of Piano-Forte Makers; a second Model Lodging- House, near Tottenham Court TJoad; a third establishment of the same nature, but for families, as the others were for single persons; and a large Bathing and Washing house, where par ties could come and do washing and ironing, everything but soap being supplied, at very low rates. All these establish ments of a cooperative nature, and especially the Lodging- Houses, were successful. A knowledge of their operations was food for much thought in Mr. Greeley s after years. He never lost faith in the idea that the future great amelioration of the condition of Labour lay in Cooperation a term then comparatively unknown, now well nigh as familiar as Partner ship, or Company. A visit to a " Ragged School " in Carter s- 238 LIFE OF HORACE OREELEY. field Lane, Smithfield, impressed him with profound sorrow. "There are not many hogs in America," he said, "who are not better lodged than these poor human brethren and sisters." He could not long endure the pitiable spectacle, but, leaving a contribution of money, hastened away in unspeakable sadness. Very few generous natures can witness such scenes as this, or know that they exist in every great city, without thinking there is something radically vicious in our social institutions. Such was the nature of Horace Greeley s "sight-seeing" in London for the most part. No chasing after royalty, and aristocracy, and the Horse Guards in bloodless review here. He did, indeed, spend an hour or two, one evening, in trying to find William and Mary Howitt, but signally failed, though they lived, happy old Quaker couple of authors, at No. 28 Upper Avenue Road, and he found Numbers 27, 29, 30, and 31, also Nos. 5 and 16 near by, but no 28. At last, with help of a guide, he found it in a distant part of the street. Such are the intolerable intricacies of London street-numbering. He visited Westminster Abbey too, attending divine worship in that venerable pile, and was not favourably impressed either with the building or the manner of worship. About this latter there was a great deal too much of " an Eleventh-century air," he thought, for good healthy religious respiration. He thought there were ten churches in New- York superior to the Abbey for purposes of worship. Mr. Greeley expressed great admiration of " the imperial growth " of London, but his general description of the city \vas of a very practical nature. The buildings, he observed, were generally superior to those of New- York; the streets were better paved, cleaned, and lighted, but sadly worse in respect to names, there being half a dozen streets and places of the same name, and the numbering of many absurdly vicious; the police " were omnipresent and efficient." But the hotels were decidedly inferior to those of New- York; cabs and carriages for hire far ahead; omnibusses better governed ; while the parks, squares, and public gardens of London "beat us clean out of sight." Whereupon, Mr. Greeley says that New- York ought to have made provision, long before, for a series of ME. GREELEY ON ENGLISH NEWSPAPERS. 239 parks and gardens extending quite across the island between Thirtieth and Fiftieth streets. It is now too late for that, he adds, and asks, " where is to be the Public Garden of KCAV- York? where the attractive walks and pleasure-grounds of the crowded denizens of the Eastern Wards? These must be pro vided, and the work cannot be commenced too soon." The magnificent Central Park, most beautiful and attractive pleasure-grounds of America, has answered Horace Greeley s questions of 1851, and complied with his wise demand. When Mr. Greeley arrived in England, the discussion of "the taxes on knowledge" which had for some time attracted much attention from the general public had reached Parlia ment, where the repeal of such taxation had many friends. A committee, of which the Et. Hon. T. Milnor Gibson was chair man, and the celebrated Richard (Jobden one of the members, had the subject in charge, and requested Mr. Greeley to appear and give them the results of his experience and observation. lie was examined at great length by the committee. The taxes complained of were an impost upon advertisements, and a stamp-tax of one penny per copy on every newspaper. The substantial portions of Mr. Greeley s examination were as follows : Your duty is the same on the advertisements in a journal with fifty thousand circulation, as in a journal with one thousand, although llic value of the article is twenty times as much in the one case as in the other. The duty operates precisely as though you were to lay a tax of one .shilling a day on every day s labour that a man were to do; to a man whose labour is worth two shillings a day, it would be destructive; Avhile by a man who earns twenty shillings a day, it would be very lightly felt. An advertise ment is worth but a certain amount, and the public soon get to know what it is worth ; you put a duty on advertisements and you destroy the value of those coming to new establishments. People who advertise in your well-established journals, could afford to pay a price to include the duty; but in a new paper, the advertisements would not be worth the amount of the duty alone; and consequently the new concern would have no chance. Now, the advertisements are one main source of the income of daily papers, and thousands of business men take them mainly for those adver tisements. .For instance, at the time when our auctioneers were appointed by law (they were, of course, party politicians), one journal, which vva-., high in the confidence of the party in power, obtained not a law, but an understanding/, that all the auctioneers appointed should advertise in that 240 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. journal. Now, though the journal referred to lias ceased to be of that party, and the auctioneers are no longer appointed by the State, yet that journal has almost the monopoly of the auctioneers business to this day. Auctioneers must advertise in it because the} know that purchasers are looking there ; and purchasers must take the paper, because they know that it contains just the advertisements they want to see; and this, without regard to the goodness- or the principles of the paper. I know men in this town who take one journal mainly for its advertisements, and they must take the Times, because everything is advertised in it ; for the same reason, advertisers must advertise in the Times. If we had a duty on advertisements, I will not say it would be impossible to build a new con cern up in New-York against the competition of the older ones; but I do say, it would be impossible to preserve the weaker papers from being swallowed up by the stronger. Mr. COBDEN Do you then consider the fact, that the Times newspaper for the last fifteen years has been increasing so largely in circulation, is to be accounted for mainly by the existence of the advertising duty ? Mr. GREELEY Yes ; much more than the stamp. By the operation of the advertisement duty, an advertisement is charged ten times as much in one paper as in another. An advertisement in the Times may be worth live pounds, while in another paper it is only worth one pound; but the duty is the same. Mr. RICH The greater the number of small advertisements in papers, the greater advantage to their proprietors? Mr. GREELEY Yes. Suppose the cost of a small advertisement to be five shillings, the usual charge in the Times; if you have to pay a shilling or eighteen pence duty, that advertisement is worth nothing in a journal with a fourth part of the circulation of the Times. CHAIRMAN Does it not appear to you that the taxes on the press are hostile to one another ; in the first place, lessening the circulation of papers by means of the stamp duty, we diminish the consumption of paper, and therefore lessen the amount of paper duty; secondly, by diminishing the sale of papers through the stamp, we lessen the number of advertisements, and therefore the receipts of the advertisement duty . Mr. GREELEY I should say that if the government were, simply as a matter of revenue, to fix a duty, say of half a penny per pound, on paper, it would be easily collected, and produce more money; and then, a law which is equal in its operation does not require any considerable number of officers to collect the duty, and it would require no particular vigilance ; and the duty on paper alone would be most equal and most efficient as a revenue duty. CHAIRMAN It is clear, then, that the effect of the stamp and advertise ment duty is to lessen the amount of the receipts from the duty on paper? Mr. GREELEY Enormously. I see that the circulation of daily papers in London is but sixty thousand, against a hundred thousand in New- York; while the tendency is more to concentrate in London than in ON ENGLISH JOURNALS. 241 New- York Not a tenth part of our daily papers are printed in New- York. CHAIRMAN When a person proposes to publish a paper in New-York, he is not required to go to any office to register himself, or to give security that he will not insert libels or seditious matter? A newspaper publisher is not subjeet to any liability more than other persons? Mr. GREELEY No ; no more than a man that starts a blacksmith s shop. Mr. COBDEN From what you have stated with regard to the circulation of the daily papers in New- York, it appears that a very large proportion of the adult population must be customers for them ? Mr. GREELEY Yes ; I thing three-fourths of all the families take a daily paper of some kind. Mr. COBDEN The purchasers of the daily papers must consist of a dif ferent class from those in England ; mechanics must purchase them? . Mr. GREELEY Every mechanic takes a paper, or nearly every one. Mr. COBDEN Do those people generally get them before they leave home for their work ? Mr. GREELEY Yes; and you are complained of if you do not furnish a man with his newspaper at his breakfast ; he wants to read it between six or seven usually ? Mr. COBDEN Then a ship-builder, or a cooper, or a joiner, needs his daily paper at his breakfast-time? Mr. GREELEY Yes; and he may take it with him to read at his dinner between twelve and one; but the rule is, that he wants his paper at his breakfast. Mr. COBDEN After he has finished his breakfast or his dinner, he may be found reading the daily newspaper, just as the people of the upper classes do in England ? Mr. GREELEY Yes. Mr. EWART Is scurillity or personality common in the publications of the United States ? Mr. GREELEY It is not common ; it is much less frequent than it was ; but it is not absolutety unknown. CHAIRMAN As the demand is extensive, is the remuneration for the ser vices of the literary men who are employed on the press, good ? Mr. GREELEY The prices of literary labour are more moderate than in this country. The highest salary, I think, that would be commanded by any one connected with the press would be five thousand dollars the highest that could be thought of. I have not heard of higher than three thousand. CHAIRMAN Are your leading men in America, in point of literary abil ity, employed from time to time upon the press as an occupation ? Mr. GREELEY It is beginning to be so, but it has not been the custom. There have been leading men connected with the press ; but the press has not been usually conducted by the most powerful men. With a few ex ceptions, the leading political journals are conducted ably, and they are 16 242 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. becoming more so ; and, with a wider diffusion of the circulation, the press is more able to pay for it. CHAIRMAN Do not you consider that newspaper reading is calculated to keep up a habit of reading? Mr. GREELET I think it is worth all the schools in the country. 1 think it creates a taste for reading in every child s mind, and it increases his interest in his lessons ; he is attracted from always seeing a newspaper and hearing it read, I think. CHAIRMAN Supposing that you had your schools as now, but that your newspaper press were reduced within the limits of the press in England, do you not think that the habit of reading acquired at school would be frequently laid aside? Mr. GREELEY I think that the habit would not be acquired, and that paper reading would fall into disuse. Mr. EWART Having observed both countries, can you state whether the press has greater influence on public opinion in the United States than in England, or the reverse ? Mr. GREELEY I think it has more influence with us. I do not know that any class is despotically governed by the press but its influence is more universal ; every one reads and talks about it with us, and more weight is laid upon intelligence than on editorials; the paper which brings the quickest news is the thing looked to. Mr. EWART The leading article has not so much influence as in Eng land? Mr. GREELEY No ; the telepraphic dispatch is the great point. Mr. COBDEX Observing our newspapers and comparing them with the American papers, do you find that we make much less use of the electric telegraph for transmitting news than in America? Mr. GREELEY Not a hundredth part as much as we do. Mr. COBDEN An impression prevails in this country that our newspaper press incurs a great deal more expense to expedite news than you do in New-York. Are you of that opinion ? Mr. GREELEY I do not know what your expense is. I should say that a hundred thousand dollars a year is paid by our association of the six leading daily papers, besides what each gets separately for itself. Mr. COBDEN Twenty thousand pounds a year is paid by your association, consisting of six papers, for what you get in common ? Mr. GREELEY Yes; we telegraph a great deal in the United States. As suming that a scientific meeting was held at Cincinnati this year, we should telegraph the reports from that place, and I presume other journals would have special reporters to report the proceedings at length. We have a report everv day, fifteen hundred miles, from New Orleans ; from St. Louis, too, and other places. The Committee then adjourned. From this time forth the unpopularity of "the taxes on knowledge " rapidly increased, and they were at length re CROSSING THE CHANNEL. 243 pealed. The people of England are very greatly indebted for having the Cheap Press so soon as they did to the Founder of The New-York Tribune. Having spent not quite two months in London. in which few weeks he had been able to confer valuable renown upon his country and to aid the cause of human progress. Mr. Greelev proceeded to Paris. The journey by rail from London to Dover, a very mean, old town, as he thought, suggested to his mind, seeing so little attention to fruit culture, the busi ness of exporting dried fruit, especially peaches, from America to England. And he told exactly how the business ought to be done in order to be profitable. The steamboat in which he crossed the Channel " was one of those long, black, narrow scow contrivances, about equal to a buttonwood dug-out, which England appears to delight in. * In this wretched concern, which was too insignificant to be slow, we went cobbling and wriggling across the Channel (27 miles) in something less than two hours, often one gunwale nearly under water and the other ten or twelve feet above it, with no room under deck for half our passengers, and the spray frequently dashing over those above it, three-fourths of the whole number deadly sick (this individual of course included), when with a decent boat the passage might be regularly made, in spite of such smartish breeze as we encountered, in comparative comfort." The Channel is noted for making one discharge one s atrabilarious- ness. " We were detained," he says, " a long hour in Calais a queer old town, with little trade and only a historical impor tance although dur baggage was not examined there, but sealed up for custom-house scrutiny at Paris. They made a few dollars out of us by charging for extra baggage, one of them out of me. though my trunk contained only clothing and three or four books. Small business this for a railroad, though it will do in stage transportation. Our passports were scruti nized, we (the green ones) obtained an execrable dinner for 37 cents, and changed some sovereigns for French silver at a shave which was not atrocious. Finally, we were all let go." And away they went over the flat marshy country to the world s fashionable metropolis, not arriving there until 2 244 LIFE OF HORACE QREELEY. o clock Sunday morning, instead of 10^ the previous evening, according to advertisement. Here Mr. Greeley made his " first attempt at mouthing French," and a friend (not of the " green ones "), having drilled him, he bravely sang out " sauk- on-du" for his trunk (^^-cinquante-deux by number) and succeeded in making himself intelligible. He found shelter but no bed at the Hotel Choiseul, Hue St. Honore, the city being overcrowded with visitors. After breakfast he repaired to the famous Church of Madeleine, reputed one of the finest in Europe. The service, much of it being " inexplicable dumb show" to him, was not pleasing, but he quoted: " Peace be with all, whate er their varying creeds, With all who send up holy thoughts on high." That which appeared to strike Mr. Greeley most forcibly in the social life of Paris was the general, almost universal, pur suit of amusement. The Frenchman s pleasures, he thought, were all social. " To eat, drink, or spend the evening alone would be a weariness to him: he reads his newspaper in the thoroughfare or the public gardens: he talks more in one day than an Englishman in three: the theatres, balls, concerts, etc., which to the islander afford occasional recreation, are to him a nightly necessity: he would be lonely and miserable without them. Nowhere is Amusement more systematically, sedu lously sought than in Paris ; nowhere is it more abundant or accessible. For boys just escaped from school or paternal restraint, intent on enjoyment and untroubled by conscience or forecast, this must be a rare city. Its people, as a com munity, have signal good qualities and grave defects: they are intelligent, vivacious, courteous, obliging, generous, and humane; eager to enjoy, but willing that all the world should enjoy with them ; while at the same time they are impulsive, fickle, sensual, and irreverent. Paris is the Paradise of the Senses; a focus of Enjoyment, not of Happiness. Nowhere are Youth and its capacities more prodigally lavished; nowhere is old age less happy or less respected. Paris has tens of thou sands who would eagerly pour out their hearts blood for liberty and human progress, but no class or clan who ever FRANCE A REPUBLIC. 245 thought of denying themselves wine and kindred stimulants in order that the masses should be rendered worthier of liberty and thus better fitted to preserve and enjoy it." The want of respect for Marriage he thought was productive of great demoralization. " In no other nominally Christian city is the proportion of the unmarried so great as here," said he; "nowhere else do families so quickly decay ; nowhere else is the proportion of births out of wedlock so appalling." In fine, Mr. Greeley placed a very low estimate upon Parisian morals. Some writers have said that Mr. Greeley s judgment of the political situation in France was exceedingly erroneous; his forecast of the future especially wrong. He said, " alike by its own strength and by its enemies divisions, the safety of the Eepublic is assured ; and time is on the popular side, and every hour s endurance adds strength to the Eepublic." Still again: "I marvel at the obliquity of vision whereby any one is enabled, standing in this metropolis, to anticipate the sub version of the Republic and the restoration of Monarchy." Those who have criticised Mr. Greeley as herein misjudging have, it w r ould appear, misjudged him. In the sentences quoted and other similar expressions he intended to express the opinion that France had become genuinely Republican, and that such would continue to be the permanent form of gov ernment. But he also expressly stated that the Republic was in great danger on account of certain evil laws, and might thereby suffer temporary disaster. In the letter in which occurs his strongest asseveration of the permanency of the Republic, he says: "The French have great faults of char acter which imperil the immediate fortunes of the Republic but cannot affect its ultimate ascendency. Impulsive and egotistic, they may seem willing to exchange Liberty for Tranquillity or Security, but this will be a momentary caprice, eoon past and forgotten. The Nation can never more be other than Republican, though the possessors of power, controlling the Press, the Bureaux, the Assembly, and the Army, may fancy that their personal interests would be promoted by a less popular system, and so be seen for a season following 246 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. strange gods. This delusion and apostacy will speedily pass, leaving only tlieir shame behind," He not only saw an immediate peril to the Republic, in the great faults of char acter of the French, but also in the arbitrary disfranchisement of nearly one-half the democratic voters, the manacled condi tion of the press, the denial to the people of the right of public assemblage, and the betrayal of the enormous power and patronage of government into the hands of the Aristo cratic party. In consideration of these things, he clearly saw u the immediate peril of the Republic" in the election which would take place in May of the following year. The Republic might be then engulfed, but it would not be for long. Such was the whole of Mr. Greeley s opinion in 1851. Those who treated it lightly about 1854, might have changed their minds inside of twenty years. Mr. Greeley looked farther into a quarter of a century to come than they did. Before his departure for Lyons he visited several of the late Royal, then and now National Palaces of France, and though acknowledging their beauty and splendour, it is very clear that the sight of them impressed him unfavourably; that he would rather have contemplated a prosperous potato-patch than the bewildering " glories " of Versailles. He thought some of these palaces ought to be converted into Hospitals, Libraries, Galleries of Art, etc. Versailles, however, was a bad bargain, and " could not be sold as it stands, for a tenth of its actual cost!" Clearly, these "Royal Palaces " abated 110 whit of the democracy of this man of the people. " Perhaps it w r ill be best, therefore," he said, " to convert all the others into direct uses and preserve Versailles for public inspection as a perpet ual memorial of the reckless prodigality and all-devouring pomp of Kings, and as a warning to Nations never again to entrust their destinies to men who, from their very education and the influences surrounding them through life, must be led to consider the Toiling Millions as mainly created to pamper their appetites, to gratify their pride, and to pave with their corpses their road to extended dominion." He spent a good part of two days, however, in the Louvre, whose galleries, he OK DILIGENCE TO TOKEN. 247 said, " contain more strikingly good paintings than I shall ever again see under one roof." He proceeded by rail from Paris to Chalons on the Saone, but on account of bad management at depots and by omnibus men, he did not reach the landing in time to take the steam boat for Lyons. Getting a good room, however with a clean bed, and plenty of water (for France) and there being no sleep ing accommodations on the departed boat, he philosophically concluded, " I was rather glad we had been swindled than otherwise." The voyage on the Saone to Lyons was pleasant, but the scenery tarne, he thought, in comparison with that of the Con necticut or the Hudson. Lyons, notable for its manufacture of silks, the focus of Democratic Socialism, was at the time in a situation of commercial depression. Whereupon Mr. Greeley indited a brief essay undertaking to show that " it is not best for themselves nor fur mankind that 100,000 silk-workers should be clustered on any square mile or two of earth." They ought to be scattered widely over the world, in the interest of Industry. He carried the Protectionist argument for Diversity of Industry to an extreme which may be called, not to be too reverent, the Scatteration of Industry. And it certainly would be very convenient if Lyons silks, as well as California gold mines, South African diamond fields, and such, were distrib uted around a little more generously than they are. Until they shall be, it may be regarded as inevitable that trade and commerce meet with occasional " depressions." At Lyons, Mr. Greeley turned aside from the general route thence to Italy, and booked himself for a ride across the Lower Alps by diligence to Turin. He took a seat in the banquette, on top of the diligence, and away the lumbering vehicle sped, drawn by four horses, first over a level, productive country to the frontiers of Savoy, where began the country of mountains. "They rose before and around us," he writes, "from the moment of our crossing the boundary, grim, rugged, and precipitous, they formed a striking contrast to all of Europe I had hitherto seen." All through Savoy, he was ever in sight of snow-covered peaks. He saw quite as many women as men 24:8 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. at work in the fields, and did not like the sight. At Cham- bery, the capital of ancient Savoy, the diligence made a halt, and the passengers were allowed twenty-five minutes for break fast, which would have been very well but that the time required for cooking most of the breakfast had to come out of it. Mr. Greeley gives this account of his Savoyard breakfast: "There was enough, and good enough to eat, wine in abundance without charge, but tea, coffee, or chocolate, must be ordered and paid for extra. Yet I was unable to obtain a cup of chocolate, the excuse being that there was not time to make it. I did not understand, therefore, why I was charged more than others for breakfast; but to talk English against French or Italian is to get a mile behind in no time, so I pocketed the change offered me and came away. On the coach, however, with an Englishman near me who had travelled this way before and spoke French and Italian, I ventured to express my ignorance as follows : " Neighbour, why was I charged three francs for breakfast, and the rest of you but two and a half? " Don t know perhaps you had tea or coffee. " No, sir don t drink either. 1 " Then perhaps you washed your face and hands. " Well, it would be just like me. " O, then, that s it! The half franc was for the basin and towel. " Ah, out, oui." 1 So the milk in that cocoanut was accounted for." Over Mount Cenis, up by slow travel, the diligence now drawn by eight horses, down at breakneck speed, two horses and the brakes sufficing, and daylight found the traveller in the valley of the Po, the great plain of Upper Italy, with breakfast June 20 in Turin before 9 o clock. Mr. Greeley was much pleased with Turin, which, under the liberal govern ment of Victor Emmanuel, was at this time rapidly increasing in industry and population. But he thought Genoa, which he visited next, superior in most respects if not in all. " I never saw," he says, in a letter of June 22d, " so many churches so admirably constructed and so gorgeously, laboriously orna mented as the half dozen I visited yesterday and this morning." He was greatly pleased with the modest, graceful monument to Christopher Columbus, the Genoese discoverer of America, and charmed with the costly, beautiful architecture of the city. His bed-room at the " Hotel des Londres," was larger, with ROME. 249 more lofty ceilings, than most American parlours or drawing- rooms. Mr. Greeley carefully studied the political situation in -the Kingdom of Sardinia, and considering that the King had nobly redeemed his promise " to rear free institutions in the midst of surrounding ruins," by the establishment of religious freedom and a Free Press, he thought those were in this instance in the right who held fast by King and Constitution, the Monarch being most zealous in the cause of progress and reform. He regretted the necessity of an army of fifty thou sand men, and another, not necessary, of sixty thousand priests (and no common schools!); nevertheless, he predicted Italy s future as a Federal Republic. It seems probable already that he herein correctly saw the coming events; and his bright vision of United Italy has for many years been realized. But he was less confident after he had seen more of Italy. From Genoa Mr. Greeley proceeded to Leghorn in a " wretched old apology for a steamship," and thence wrote a letter in which he " blew up " the Yankee consuls, the Tuscan police, and French government steamships in the Mediter ranean, but it never came to hand. He visited Pisa, and thought the wonderful Leaning Tower worthy of all the fame it has acquired. The day before his visit was the anniversary of the Patron Saint of Pisa, which was this year celebrated with great pomp, $100,000 being expended for fire-works, "though Pisa cannot afford," he dryly remarks, " to sustain free com mon schools or make any provision for the education of her children. Of course she can afford to die, or is certain to do it, whether she can afford it or not." Returning to Leghorn, he went thence by steamer to Civita Vecchia, where he saw four sorts of men only, namely, officials engaged in fleecing travellers, priests, soldiers, and beggars. Thus his entrance into the Papal States impressed him very unfavourably, and the ride of twenty -five miles by diligence to Rome, through a country in a condition showing utter shift- lessness, added to his disappointment. But Rome "is mighty even in her desolation. I knew," he continues, "the world had nothing like her, and yet the 250 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. impression she has made on me, at the first view, is unexpect edly great." He remained in the city but a week. He thought the churches of Rome richer in sculpture, porphyry, mosaic, carving, tapestry, etc., than anything elsewhere well can be; but not equal in architecture to the finest churches in Genoa, the Cathedral at Pisa, and, externally, to Notre Dame at Paris. As to sculpture and painting, he was tempted to say that "if mankind were compelled to choose between the destruction of what is in Rome or that of all the rest in the world, the former should be saved at the expense of the latter." .But he was not impressed with the superiority of ancient over modern art; and was decidedly of opinion that Rome has been unwisely grasping with regard to works of art. Upon this subject he gave some excellent practical suggestions which would be found valuable to this day. St. Peter s he regarded as "the Niagara of edifices, having the same relation to other master-pieces of human effort that the great cataract bears to other terrestrial effects of Divine power." Time and genius, he thought, may produce other structures as admirable in their own way and regarded in con nection with their uses; but viewed as a temple, St. Peter s will ever stand unmatched and unapproachable. His first visit was in the early morning, and he found no time when the great structure was so impressive. It is doubtful whether there have been any more genuine appreciative descriptions of St. Peter s than Horace Greeley s. " Go very early," he advises, " if you would see St. Peter s in its calm and stately grandeur." With the Coliseum he was also greatly impressed. It seemed to him as majestic and impressive in its utter deso lation as it ever could have been in in its grandeur and glory. He says: " We were fortunate in the hour of our visit. As we slowly made the circuit of the edifice, a body of French cavalry were exercising their horses along the eastern side of it, while at a little distance, in the grove or garden at the south, the quick rattle of the drum told of the evolutions of infantry. At length the horsemen rode slowly away to the southward, and our attention was drawn to certain groups of Italians in the interior, who were slowly marching and chanting. We entered, and were witnesses of a strange, impressive ceremony. It is among the traditions of Rome A SINGULAR CEREMONY. 251 that a great number of the early Christians were compelled by their heathen persecutors to fight and die here as gladiators, as a punishment for their contumacious, treasonable resistance to the lower law then in the ascendant, which the high priests and circuit judges of that day were wont in their sermons and charges to demonstrate that every one was bound as a law-abiding citizen to obey, no matter what might be his pri vate, personal convictions with regard to it. Since the Coliseum has been cleared of rubbish, fourteen little oratories or places of prayer have been cheaply constructed around its inner circumference, and here at certain seasons prayers are offered for the eternal bliss of the martyred Christians of the Coliseum. These prayers were being offered on this occasion. Twenty or thirty men (priests or monks I inferred), partly bare-headed, but as many with their heads completely covered by hooded cloaks, which left only two small holes for the eyes, accompanied by a large num ber of women, marched slowly and sadly to one oratory, chanting a prayer by the way, setting up their lighted tapers by its semblance of an altar, kneeling and praying for some minutes, then rising and proceeding to the next oratory, and so on until they had repeated the service before every one. They all seemed to be of the poorer class, and I presume the cere mony is often repeated or the participators would have been much more numerous. The praying was fervent and I trust excellent, as the music decidedly was not; but the whole scene, with the setting sun shining redly through the shattered arches and upon the ruined wall, with a few French soldiers standing heedlessly by, was strangely picturesque, and to me affect, ing. I came away before it concluded, to avoid the damp night-air; but many checkered years and scenes of stirring interest must intervene to efface from my memory that sun-set and those strange prayers in the Coli. seum." He paid several visits to the Vatican with which he was greatly pleased, but failed to see some of the most precious works of art which are there preserved, \vhereupon, he wished " the Papal government would frankly exact, as J for one would most cheerfully pay. a fair price for admission to the most admirable and unrivalled collections which are its prop erty." He expressed unbounded admiration of the princely families of Rome, whose palaces and immense collections of paintings and sculptures are almost daily open to strangers without charge, save the trifle that you choose to give the attendant who shows you through them. " What American," he asks, " ever thought of spending half an immense fortune in the collection of magnificent galleries ot pictures, statues, etc., and then quietly opening the whole to the public without expecting a word of compliment or acknowledgement in re- 252 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. turn? vnmout being personally known to those whom he thus benefited? We have something to learn of Rome in this respect." The common people of Rome seemed to Mr. Greeley to be an intelligent, vivacious race, and he credited the opinion that they were mentally superior to most other Italians. He rarely met a face indicating mental imbecility, or even low mediocrity among the Romans. The women did not dress well, he observed, but were ready at repartee, self-possessed, energetic, with flashing eyes and countenances often indicating a depth of emotion and character. He did not think such pictures as abound in Rome could have been painted where the women were common-place and unideal. But he had an unfavourable opinion of the moral qualities of the Romans, including therein patriotism and all the civic virtues. He thought they were quite commonly sensual, selfish, indolent, fickle, dishon est, vicious. Their want of genuine religious and civic virtues he attributed to the unfavourable operation of "religious machinery," and execrable civil government. Such a thing as enterprise, he said, is utterly unknown south of Genoa. From Rome Mr. Greeley proceeded to Venice, by Civita Yecchia, thence by sea to Leghorn, and then by Florence, Bologna, Ferrera, and Padua. His stay in Florence was brief, and he spent most of the time, under guidance of good Amer ican friends, in looking through the galleries devoted to paint ings and statuary in the two famous palaces of the reigning family and in the Academy. His expectations were not fully realized, a fact which he attributed to late illness at sea and his recent acquaintance with the immense and multiform treas ures of art at Rome. But he found no such exquisite pleasure at Rome as he derived from the hour he spent in the studio of the distinguished American sculptor, Hirain Powers. "I defy," he exclaims, "antiquity to surpass I doubt its ability to rival his Proserpine and his Psyche with any mod els of the female head that have come down to us; and while I do not see how they could be excelled in their own sphere, I feel that Powers, unlike Alexander, has still realms to conquer, and will fulfil -his destiny." He also saw Hart, Gait, and AN ADVENTURE. 253 Rogers. Greenough he had previously met at Turin on his way to America. Of American painters, he met only Page. Hastening onward he crossed the Apennines mainly in the night. They seemed to him a little higher than the Green Mountains of Vermont, though they were far more precipitous and sterile. Passing out of Tuscany into the Papal territory again, all the baggage had to be overhauled, and passports re-scrutinized "two processes, he says, "to which I am becoming more accustomed than any live eel ever was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the pecu niary swindle trifling." The only thing he saw at Bologna, to extract a practical remark from, was an awning of sheeting or calico spread over the centre of the main street on a level with the roofs of the houses for the distance of half a mile or more. He distrusted its standing a strong gust, but if it would, thought the idea worth borrowing. The chief business of Bologna seemed to be " watching gates and vise mg passports." From Bologna to Padua by diligence, with plenty of stupid stoppages and temptations to use the energetic idium. He thought the diligence travelling in Italy must have been organized " on purpose to afford the least possible accommoda tion at the most exorbitant cost." An amusing incident of the journey between Bologna and Yenice is thus related : "As midnight drew on, I grew weary of gazing at the same endless diversity of grain-fields, vineyards, rows of trees, etc., though the bright moon was now shining; and, shutting out the chill night-air, I disposed myself on my old great-coat and softest carpet-bag for a drowse, having ample room at my command if I could but have brought it into a straight line. But the road was hard, the coach a little the uneasiest I ever hardened my bones upon, and my slumber was of a dislurbed and dubious character, a dim sense of physical discomfort shaping and colouring my incoherent and fitful visions. For a time I fancied myself held down on my back while some malevolent wretch drenched the floor (and me) with filthj- water; then I was in a rude scuffle, and came out third or fourth best, with my clothes badly torn ; anon I had lost my hat in a strange place, and could not begin to find it! and at last my clothes were full of grasshoppers and spiders, who were beguiling their leisure by biting and stinging me. The misery at last became unbearable and I awoke. But where? I was plainly in a tight, dark box that needed more air; I soon recollected that it was a stage-coach, wherein I had been making my way from Ferrara to Padua. I threw open the door and looked out. Horses, 254 LIFE OF HORACK GREELKY. postilions, and guard were all gone; the moon, the fields, the road were gone: I was in a close court-yard, alone with Night and Silence; but where? A church clock struck three; but it was only promised that we should reach Padua by four, and I, making the usual discount on such promises, had set down five as the probable hour of our arrival. I got out to take a more deliberate survey, and the tall form and bright bayonet of an Austrian sentinel, standing guard over the egress of the court-yard, were before me. To talk German was beyond the sweep of 1113- dizziest ambition, but an Italian runner or porter instantly presented himself. From him I made out that I was in Padua of ancient and learned renown, and that the first train for Venice would not start for three hours yet. [ followed him into a convenient cafe, which was all open and well lighted, where I ordered a cup of chocolate, and proceeded leisurly to discuss it. When I had finished, the other guests had all gone out, but daylight was coming in, and I began to feel more at home. The cafj tender was asleep in his chair; the porter had gone off; the sentinel alone kept awake on his post. Soon the welcome face of the coach-guard, whom I had borne company from Bologna, appeared; I hailed him, obtained my baggage, hired a porter, and, having nothing more to wait for, started at a little past four for the Railroad station, nearly a mile distant ; taking observa tions as I went. Arrived at the depot, I discharged my porter, sat clown and waited for the place to open, with ample leisure for reflection. At six o clock I felt once more the welcome motion of a railroad car, and at eight was in Venice." If Mr. Greeley had been delighted with the valley of the Po a great portion of which he had now traversed, he was enrap tured with Venice. "Venice!" he exclaims. " Queen of the Adriatic! City of the Heart! how can I ever forget thee? Brief, too brief was my halt amid thy glorious structures, but such eras are measured not by hours, but by sensations; and my first day in Venice must ever hold its place among the most cherished recollections of my life. 1 Every tourist falls in love with \ r enice, and, as "Is the case quite generally in the matter of falling in love, very few can give satisfactory accounts of the phenomenon. A most charming time did Mr. Greeley have in Venice, ever under the resistless fascination; but, having left the presence of the charmer, he returned to his philosophy and wrote: " Full of interest as is everything in Venice, I do not remember to have detected there the effectual working of a single idea of the last century, save in the railroad, which barely touches without enlivening her, the solitary steamboat belonging to Trieste, and two or three larger gondolas UPSET ! 255 marked Omnibus this or that, which appeared to be conveying good loads of passengers from one end of the city to the other for one-sixth or eighth of the price which the same journey solus cost me. The omnibus typifies Association the simple but grandly fruitful idea which is des tined to renovate the world of industry and production, substituting abundance and comfort for penury and misery. For man. I trust, this quickening word is yet seasonable; for Venice it is too late. It is far easier to found two new cities than to restore one dead one. Fallen Queen of the Adriatic ! a long and mournful adieu !" From Venice Mr. Greeley returned to London by Milan, crossing the Alps by the pass of St. Gothard, Lucerne, Basle, Cologne, Brussels, and Paris, being less than a fortnight on the whole journey, but writing instructive and eminently practical letters to The Tribune in description of Lombardy, Switzerland, a portion of Germany, Belgium, and Northeastern France. American agriculture, he asserted, had just two arts to learn from Lombardy irrigation and tree-planting. And he proceeded to demonstrate his proposition very much as though he were delivering a capital agricultural address at an American State Fair. But then, on the other hand, he thought- one of Italy s great wants was a good deal of sub-soil plough ing on the American plan. Switzerland, he averred, could not afford to be a Kingdom, the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish her people. Yet everywhere he saw frugal thrift and homely content, and only two beggars during his journey through the country. Descending the Alps at the usual rapid rate, the diligence upset. The incident is thus related : "I was just thinking that though every one should know his own business best, yet if /were to drive down a steep mountain in that way 1 should expect to break my neck, and suspect I deserved it, when, as we turned a sharp zig-zag on a steep grade at a stiff trot, our carriage tilted, and over she went in a twinkling. Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the battle. Had they started, the diligence managers could only have rendered a flemish account of that load. As it was they stopped, and the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute. I was on the box seat with him and fell under him, catching a bad sprain of the left wrist on which I came clown, which disables that hand for a few days nothing broken and no great harm done. But I should judge that our heads lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below 256 LIFE OF HORACE GREET.EY. particularly jagged and uninviting. Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge seriatim, from the side door which in the fall came uppermost only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dan gerous. Each, as his or her head protruded through the aperture, began to let in on the driver, whose real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in excellent humour. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent s eyes and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished I could have understood her more pre cisely. Though not more than eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty." Mr. Greeley had often met Germans, of course, but thought they were seen to the best advantage at home. He heartily acknowledged their uniform courtesy (" save in the detestable habit of smoking"), and was greatly pleased with the deference of members of the same family to each other. " The Swiss," he observed, " are freemen, and wear the fact unconsciously but palpably on their brows and beaming from their eyes. The Germans submit passively to arbitrary power which they see not how successfully to resist, but they render to rank or dig nity no more homage than is necessary their souls are still free, and their manners evince a simplicity and frankness which might shame or at least instruct America." Mr. Greeley had but a short stay in Belgium. Writing of it, he speaks of the state of agriculture; women working in the fields; radical railroads, etc.; but not a word of Waterloo, which was then overdone into a very dry crisp. His route from Paris to London was by Kouen and Dieppe, instead of by Calais. But the trip across the Channel was even more dis agreeable than the former one, and the wretched boats came in for a heavy discharge of execration. From Paris he wrote of the expected defeat of Lonis Napoleon s reelection, therein misjudging the situation. When he reached London, the Universal Peace Congress was in session, largely attended by delegates, among them many men of distinguished renown. Mr. Greeley had great respect for the cause, but could not help thinking there would have to be some more hard fighting before it could prevail. THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 257 Before returning to America, lie visited Scotland and Ire land, but had not much time to spend in either of those countries. Pie was especially pleased with Edinburgh. He "never saw so many good houses with so few indifferent;" but he spent most time of all in the Palace of Holy rood, "which, though unwisely located, never gorgeously furnished and long since abandoned of Royalty to dilapidation and decay still wears the stamp of majesty and will be regal even whe;, crumbled into ruins." Of course, like all other generous souls, which are inevitably captivated even by the memory of female loveliness, he passed into heroics when speaking of AEary Queen, of Scots. From Edinburgh, he went to Glasgow, which he describes as more American than any other city he had seen in Europe; thence by the Clyde to Greenock, and from there across the North Channel- to Belfast, Ireland. He only had a few days in Ireland. He visited Dublin, Gal way, and Limerick, but did nt have time to see Cork. His observations upon the sad condition of Ireland were intended to be of practical value. He thought the country should have a Parliament of its own that, the customs of land-tenantry were vicious and ruinous; that nowhere on earth could more good be accomplished than by the establishment of manufactures, the building of rail ways, and advancing the price of Labour. He manifested deep interest in Galway, trusting " that a new Liverpool is soon to arise here; and that, should I ever again visit Europe, I shall first land on the quay of Gal way." Perhaps the candour of Mr. Greeley, though often exhibited in the most admirable manner, was never more finely illus trated than in his expression of opinion of the English people, some of whose representative men and journals had treated him unjustly and discourteously. He says: " I do not wholly like these cold and stately English, yet I think I am not blind to their many sterling qualities. The greatness of England, it is quite confidently asserted, is based upon her conquests and plunder- ings on her immense commerce and unlimited foreign possessions. I think otherwise. The English have qualities which would have rendered them wealthy and powerful though they had been located in the centre of Asia instead of on the western coast of Europe. I do not say that these 17 258 LIFE OF HOB ACE GKEELEY. qualities could have been developed in Central Asia, but if they Juid been, they would have insured to their possessors a commanding position. Personally, the English do not attract nor shine; but collectively they are a race to make their mark on the destinies of mankind." Their distinguishing characteristics, he thought, were indus- triousness, method, economy, practicality, benevolence, gravity. Of English women, he spoke with discriminate praise. They avoided peculiarity of apparel or speech, but were unsurpassed in physical development, and were about the best mothers on earth. Against the good qualities the English set off some disagreeable ones awkwardness; too sharp an eye to business, whereby courtesy is destroyed; overweening self-conceit. Yet the better qualities, he thought, decidedly preponderate. They naturally love justice, manly dealing, fair play; and though cold and even repulsive out-of-doors, the Englishman is tender and truthful in his home. He took passage for New- York on the same steamer by which lie had crossed the ocean in April, embarking at Liver pool on the 6th of August, having been absent from home not quite four months. On shipboard, in the harbour of the commercial mart, he finished his last letter from Europe, concluding: " But I must not linger. The order to embark is given ; our good ship Baltic is ready; another hour and I shall have left England and this con tinent, probably forever With a fervent good-bye to the friends I leave on this side of the Atlantic, I turn my steps gladly and proudly toward my own loved Western home toward the land wherein Man enjoys larger opportunities than elsewhere to develop the better and the worse aspects of his nature, and where evil and good have a freer course, a wider arena for their inevitable struggles, tlran is allowed them among the heavy fetters and cast-iron forms of this rigid and wrinkled Old World. Doubt less, those struggles will long be arduous and trying; doubtless, the dic tates of duty will there often bear sternly away from the halcyon bowers of popularity ; doubtless, he who would be singly and wholly right must there encounter ordeals as severe as these which here try the souls of the would-be champions of progress and liberty. But political freedom, such as white men enjoy in the United States, and the mass do not enjoy in Europe, not even in Britain, is a basis for confident and well-grounded hope; the running stream, though turbid, tends ever to self-purification; the obstructed, stagnant pool grows daily more dank and loathsome. Believing most firmly in the ultimate triumph of Good over Evil, I rejoice. HOME AGAIN. 259 in the existence and diffusion of that liberty, which, while it intensifies the contest, accelerates the consummation. Neither blind to her errors, nor a panderer to her vices, I rejoice to feel that every hour henceforth till I see her shores must lessen the distance which divides me from my country, whose advantages and blessings this four months absence has taught me to appreciate more dearly and to prize more deeply than before. With a glow of unwonted rapture I see our stately vessel s prow turned toward the setting sun, and strive to realize that only some ten days separate me from those I know and love best on earth. Hark ! the last gun announces that the mail-boat has left us, and that we are fairly afloat on our ocean journey; the shores of Europe recede from our vision; the watery waste is all around us; and now, with God above and Death below, our gallant bark and her clustered company together brave the dangers of the mighty deep. May Infinite Mercy watch over our onward path and bring us safely to our several homes ; for to die away from home and kindred seems one of the saddest calamities that could befall me. This mortal tenement would rest uneasily in an ocean shroud; this spirit reluctantly resign that tenement to the chill and pitiless brine ; these eyes close regretfully on the stranger skies and bleak inhospitality of the sullen and stormy main. No ! let me see once more the scenes so well remem bered and beloved; let me grasp, if but once again, the hand of Friend ship, and hear the thrilling accents of proud Affection, and when sooner or later the hour of mortal agony shall come, let my last gaze be fixed on eyes that will not forget me when I am gone, and let my ashes repose in that congenial soil which, however I may there be esteemed or hated, is still My own green land forever. " CHAPTEE XV. ON THE PLATFORM REVISITS EUROPE. Mr. Greeley On the Platform His First Lecture : "Human Life" His Style of Public Speaking Publishes a Volume of Lectures and Es says, Entitled "Hints Towards Reforms" Declines to Address a Literary Society Characteristic Letter A Letter Misinterpreted Does Not "Fail to Connect" Agricultural Addresses The Indiana Agricultural Fair of 1853 Mr. Greeley s Address A Night Ride on a Hand-car Revisits Europe Several Weeks of Leisure Two Days in a French Prison His Amusing Account of His Incarceration Switzerland and the Glaciers A Presentiment Return to America. HORACE Q-BEELEY early entered the lecture field.* The plat form became a means of influence and of profit about cotem- poraneously with his rising fame. He appears to have taken advantage of it rather to extend his usefulness than to increase his income or his reputation. He chose topics of a practical nature, and discussed them in a practical manner, his chief ambition being to interest the public in behalf of Labour and to devise ways and means tor its elevation and honour. His tirst lecture was delivered on January 3d, 1843. It is thus announced in The Tribune: Horace Greeley will lecture before the New- York Lyceum at the Taber nacle, this evening. Subject, " Human Life." The lecture will commence at half past 7, precisely. If those who care t6 hear it will sit near the desk, they will favour the lecturer s weak and husky voice. The Tabernacle was admirably designed as a place for public- speaking. A large, circular building, with slanting floor, and galleries rising, one above another, nearly to the ceiling, it would seat some three thousand persons in plain view and easy hearing distance of the speaker. At the appointed time. Mr. G-reeley appeared, and making his way to the platform, looked over the audience, which did not crowd the auditorium, with his benignant expression. There was momentary applause, FIRST LECTURE. 261 after which in his thin, though penetrating voice, he began: 4 *To the piercing gaze of an unfettered spirit, unmindful of space, which should scan it from the central orb of our system, this fair globe must afford a spectacle of strange magnifi cence and beauty. Rolling on, ever on, in her appointed round, the earth must present new scenes of interest arid grandeur with every hour of her revolving progress: now the swarming vales of China and Japan, the sultry plains of India, with its tiger-hunted jungles, relieved by the gaunt, bleak piles of the Himmalehs, piercing the very skies with their pinnacles of eternal rock and ice; then appear the more allur ing and variegated glades of southern and middle Europe, and with them the scorched and glowing deserts of Africa, shining in silvery worthlessness and desolation. The broad, green belt of the billowy Atlantic now unfolds itself, and then appears the deeper green of this immense luxuriant forest, America, with the achievements of three centuries of advancing, strug gling civilization, barely sufficing to dot irregularly its eastern border, and hardly equalling in extent those prairie openings in its centre which nature, or rather the Red Man s annual conflagration, has sufficed through many ages to hollow out by imperceptible gradations. From amid the all-embracing foliage shine forth with steady radiance, with deep serenity, the mirror-like surfaces of the Great Lakes the last surpassing in size, profundity, and beauty the slender threads of the Father of Waters and his far-stretching tributaries are seen disparting vales whose exuberant fertility has known no par allel since Eden; while farther on the temendous chains of the Andes, the Rocky Mountains heave up their scathed and rugged sides through the surrounding seas of verdure, as if in grim and haughty defiance to the utmost fury of the lightning and the hurricane, or in scornful exultation over the crouching world at their feet. Soon the broad, placid surface of the vast, un vexed Pacific presents itself sprinkled with isles of deepest emerald where flowers perennial bloom. And still the earth rolls on, and every hour shall bring to view fresh marvels to awaken the soul to a consciousness of the Infinite, to deepen the fervour of piety, and exalt the glory of the Great Supreme 262 LITE OF HORACE GREELEY. " Yet beyond doubt, the central figure of this vast wonder work of creation, around which all other entities and seemings cluster and revolve, is MAN. He is the presiding genius the lord of the heritage. It is his presence which gives signifi cance and interest to the landscapes, which elevates fertility and beauty above barrenness and decay." Such were the opening sentences of Horace Greeley s first lecture. " Give me a cup of sack," says FalstaiF, " to make mine eyes look red, that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion, and I will do it in king Cambyses vein." It is difficult to imagine Horace Greeley starting forth in those paths of flowery display. And yet a lecture may be highly meritorious, as spoken, and not elicit unmixed admira tion when read. "Does it read well?" Fox used to ask when one praised a speech. "Yes." "Then," he would say, "it was not a good speech." The voice, the associations, the want of time to stop and criticise, give to spoken essays a character wholly different from that which belongs to those intended only to be read. In this instance, the lecturer became less stilted as he proceeded. He designed to show that human life was capable of more goodness and greatness, in individuals, and in the race, than was commonly supposed, and in order that the most might be made of life, sundry reforms for the elevation of the minds of the people were necessary. He concluded : Such thoughts as these are already familiar to many generous hearts, and the number is daily increasing. Let us not fear that they will long remain unacted. Let none accuse me of the enthusiast s common error the presumption that the world is to be transformed in a day. I know well how great the interval which ever divides the perception of a noble idea by a few earnest minds from its hearty acceptance, its practical realization, by the great mass of mankind. I know how any such idea must ever suffer from the errors or imperfections of its apostles, from the faithlessness of the selfish and undiscerning, from its perversion and corruption by many on whom it makes an impression. But, on the other hand, I will not close my eyes to the decided progress which Society has made during the last two centuries, nor to the direction of that progress. When I perceive that unity of effort, resting on community of interest, has checkered Christendom with roads, bridges, canals, railroads, and before unimagined facilities for the inter- ON THE PLATFORM. 263 change of products and of thought ; when I see Universal Education, so recently regarded as a benevolent chimera, now admitted in theory to be essential and attainable, though but distantly approached in practice; when I find the right of the destitute to a support at the public expense admitted and acted upon blindly, imperfectly, if you please, but still at so serious a cost and with such a uniformity both in time and space as to forbid the idea that it rests on any other foundation than that of acknowl edged and imperative duty; when I consider that so few generations have passed since the ignorant and the destitute were left to live in darkness and die by unheeded famine, no man questioning its rightfulness, and the learned, the affluent, the noble blasphemously pronouncing all this the order of Providence! I will not doubt that all these meliorations of the hard lot of the unfortunate are but slight precursors of the vast Reform which is yet to embosom all other reforms which is to secure Education and Bread even to the deepest poverty and darkest misfortune, by simply making the sinews, the exertions, of any intelligent child of Adam worth the cost of his instruction and subsistence which shall replace all our miserable and too often pernicious public and private alms to the vigour- ous, by a system of undegrading and self-sustaining General Industry, in which a place shall be open to every one who needs or asks it. Happy he who shall be enabled to show forth in his own what human life should be, unpolluted by ev^l passions, uncorroded by sordid cares, unchafed by the disappointment of selfish aspirations, ever shielded from the access of temptation and error by finding delight in duty, and a tran quil joy in the widest diffusion of blessings. Happy beyond the power of evil destiny shall he be whose life flows on in one calm, full current of active goodness of unceasing benevolence to Man, of unbounded reliance on God. Looking back in the evening of his days through the dissolving mists of the past, he shall discern in every trial, Discipline; in every sor row, the salutary chastening of a Divine beneficence. And when the bowed frame and feeble limbs shall admonish him of failing power to execute the dictates of a still loving heart, he shall need no farther witness of the benignity of that dispensation which sin recoils from as Death, but, pillowed on that blessed Book, whose promises have lighted the dim path way to millions, shall sleep to be awakened in Heaven. The ideal of human life here pictured, who e\ r er reached among men if Horace Greeley did not? As a lecturer, public speaker, Mr. Greeley constantly im proved with years. He had no time, let us hope no inclination, to practice the art of delivery, mouthing his piece before a looking-glass. But frequent exercise of his voice in lectures and addresses which he delivered subsequently to his initiation on the platform of " Human Life," gave it volume, while the same efforts tended to destroy his awkwardness of manner. 264 LIFE OF HOEACE GKEELEY. But lie never acquired any of the " tricks of oratory." Though some of his speeches, as we shall see before concluding this volume, were among the most admirable exhibitions of argu- o o ment, statesmanship, eloquence, they were delivered as one talks who simply speaks right on, trusting to the truth of his state ments and the value of his ideas, without calling to his aid the art of elocution. Had Mr. Greeley studied the art of deliv ery, for which he did not have time, it seems certain that he might have become as distinguished as an orator as he did as a journalist. As it was, his style, though ever perfectly natu ral, and, therefore, interesting, was not impressive and added nothing to the truths he advocated. Early in 1850, the Messrs. Harpers Brothers published a volume by Horace Greeley which was entitled " Hints Towards Reforms." It consisted of the lectures, and written addresses, he had up to that time delivered, and a number of essays on topics of reform which had appeared in The Tribune and other publications. The subjects treated in this volume were vari ously named: "The Emancipation of Labour;" "Life the Ideal and the Actual;" "The Formation of Character;" "The "Relations of Learning to Labour;" "Human Life;" "The Organization of Labour;" "Teachers and Teaching;" "La bour s Political Economy;" " Alcoholic Liquors their Nature and Effect:" u The Social Architects Fourier;" " The Union of Workers;" " Strikes and their Remedy," etc., etc. Never theless, the leading object throughout appears the presentation of a plea in behalf of working-men. To elevate Labour; to banish poverty from the earth, such is the plain design of Mr. Greeley s " Hints Towards Reforms." If there be in some of the lectures an ornate style which his severe taste of later years would have condemned, they nevertheless show a rich ness of thought a generous philanthropy characteristic of his mind and heart; and they may, therefore, be yet read with interest and profit. In the preface to this volume, Mr. Greeley says: But this work has a loftier and worthier aim than that of fine writing. It aspires to be a mediator, an interpreter, a reconciler, between Conserva tism and Radicalism to brina; the two into such connection and relation "HINTS TOWARDS REFORMS." 205 that the good in each may obey the law of chemical affinity, and abandon whatever portion of either is false, mistaken, or outworn, to sink down and perish. It endeavours so to elucidate and commend what is just and prac tical in the pervading demands of our time for a social Renovation that the humane and philanthropic can no longer misrepresent and malign them as destructive, demoralizing, or infidel in their tendencies, but must joyfully recognize in them the fruits of past and the seeds of future Pro gress in the history of our race. Defective and faulty as these " Hints " may be found or judged, I feel confident that their tendency is to prac tical beneficence, and that their influence, however circumscribed, can not be otherwise than wholesome. In the absence of any reasonable ground of hope for personal gain or popularity, this trust must justify my intru sion upon the public, for the first and perhaps the last time, as the author of a book. The great truths that/every human being is morally bound, by a law of our social condition, toteave the world somewhat better for his having lived in itV-\]iat no one able to earn bread has any moral right to eat with out earning it ^- that the obligation to be industrious and useful is not invalidated by the possession of wealth nor by the generosity of wealthy rela tives that useful doing in any capacity or vocation is honourable and noble, while idleness and prodigality in whatever station of life are base and contemptible that every one willing to work has a clear social and moral right to opportunity to labour and to secure the fair recompense of such labour, which society can not deny him without injustice and that these truths demand and predict a comprehensive Social Reform based upon and molded by their dictates these will be found faithfully if not forcibly set forth and elucidated in the following pages. 1 It was not very long after the publication of " Hints Towards Reforms " that, as I stepped into the post-otiice at Crawfords- ville, Indiana, one day I was then a student in Wabash College Major Calfee, tne postmaster, said : " Look here, Ingersoll, I wish you d decypher the hyroglyphics on a letter for me. And he handed me a letter over which he had been worrying for a week. "\Vhv," said I, "that is a letter from ~ v Horace Greeley. and it very plainly says: F. M. Green, Esq., Corresponding Secretary Calliopean Society, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, and, as Mr. Green is out of town, and A number of extracts from the lectures and essays in this volume will be found in the Appendix. They may be profitably studied by all who would clearly understand Mr. Greeley s principles upon a subject of the greatest moment to all men; and almost every one will find them inter esting and instructive reading. 266 LIFE OF HOKACE GREELEY. I have succeeded him in that office, I will take the epistle." It was a brief, characteristic letter: "SiR. Your letter inviting rne to address the Calliopean Society of Wabash College in July next is received. I shall have to decline the invi tation. I think I have made about as many public addresses as my reputation can well afford. If your society should wish to know my views on subjects now receiving public attention, it will find them in a volume entitled Hints Towards Reforms, published by Harpers & Brothers. Price, $1. Yours, &c., "Mr. F. M. Green, "HORACE GREELEY." " Cor. Sec., etc." The town of Sandwich, Illinois, is a place of great progres sive spirit as well as the home of many intelligent people. It has a lecture association, of course. Mr. M. B. Castle, banker and lumber-merchant as his letter-heads plainly indicated, and also the proper officer of the association, wrote to Mr. Greeley inviting him to lecture at Sandwich. His letter, as published by the newspapers, should have read as follows: " DEAR SIR. I am overworked and growing old. I shall be 60 next Feb. 3. On the whole, it seems I must decline to lecture henceforth, ex cept in this immediate vicinity, if I do at all. I cannot promise to visit Illinois on that errand certainly not now. " Yours, HORACE GREELEY. " M. B. Castle, Esq., Sandwich, 111. " Mr. Castle, with the aid of Sandwich experts, decyphered Mr. Greeley s letter on the wrong rule, and replied as follows: " SANDWICH, 111., May 12. " HORACE GREELEY: Dear Sir. Your acceptance to lecture before our association next winter came to hand this morning. Your penmanship not being the plainest, it took some time to translate it; but we succeeded; and would say your time 3d of February, and terms $60, are entirely satisfactory. As you suggest, we may be able to get you other engage ments in this immediate vicinity; if so, we will advise you. " Yours respectfully, M. B. CASTLE." Mr. Greeley s rejoinder to this letter was discovered to be emphatic, but it still awaits a literal " translation." Still another letter on the lecturing business, and we have done. He was engaged to lecture at Indianapolis, Indiana, in AT LA FAYETTE, INDIANA. 267 February, 1857, but, not arriving, it was supposed he had missed railway connections. A friend wrote to him upon the subject, and he replied: " NEW- YORK, March 4, 1857. " DEAR SIR. I only failed to connect at Indianapolis because I did not try to. I telegraphed on the 16th from Chicago to Mr. S. V. Morris, who had engaged me at Indianapolis, offering to lecture for him on the 19th, and requesting an answer. He did not send any ; so I did not go near him, but came home. " My engagements and business will prevent my return to the West this season at least. "Yours, HORACE GREELEY. " J. L. Fisk, Esq." In addition to a great many lectures, Mr. Greeley also delivered, after about the year 1848, very many addresses before agricultural societies in various parts of the country. There was scarcely a State in the Union which had a more suc cessful Agricultural Society than Indiana, from about the year 1851 onward. The Hon. Joseph A. Wright, Governor of the State, afterwards United States Senator and then Minister to Prussia, was scarcely less ardently devoted to agriculture than was Mr. Greeley himself. Differing with him in general politics, he was also like Mr. Greeley in that he was an enthu siastic friend of the cause of Total Abstinence from intoxicat ing drinks. Long President of the Agricultural Society of Indiana, Governor Wright invited Mr. Greeley to deliver che annual address in the year 1853. Mr. Greeley accepted the invitation. The Fair was held near the city of LaFayette in the month of October. The fame of Mr. Greeley brought thither an immense gathering of people. All portions of the State were, of course, represented at the Fair, but on the day of the Address by Mr. Greeley all the railways leading to the city were tested to the utmost of their capacity in carrying passen gers. Institutions of learning within a radius of a hundred miles gave their students free leave to go hear the Editor of The New- York Tribune discourse upon the subject of farming. There were at least 50,000 persons present, all of whom tried to hear Mr. Greeley s address. Perhaps as many as 25,000 268 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. heard every word of it. The writer of this volume, though he had then recently begun to feel the annoyance of the afflic tion of deafness, stood far enough from Mr. Greeley to be at the circumference of an audience of some ten or twelve thou sand persons. He distinctly heard every word of the address except the tirst few sentences. The memorable concluding passages he heard as well as though he had stood upon the platform. They were: " As for rne, long tossed on the stormy waves of doubtful conflict and arduous endeavour, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years fell upon me, the weary, tempest-driven voyager s longing for land, the wanderer s yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by his mother s knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast. The sober down- lull of life dispels many illusions, while it develops or strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or overlaid, for that dear hut, our home. And so I, in the sober afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and, bearing thither my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city s labours and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a farmer the memories of my childhood s humble home. And already I realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. Already I find in that day s quiet an antidote and a solace for the feverish, festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Already my brook murmures a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain ; and my trees, gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit, something of their own quiet strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which shall irradiate the Farmer s vocation, when a fuller and truer Education shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming La bour from drudgery while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth." Mr. Greeley delivered many excellent agricultural addresses, but I doubt whether he ever more profoundly impressed an audience than he did at LaFayette. It was not a month till portions of the address were made exercises in declamation in half the colleges of the State. I even heard S. V. Morris, referred to in the letter of Mr. Greeley last above quoted, undertake to imitate Mr. Greeley s voice and manner, in de claiming the passage just given, and with notable success. On the evening of the same day, Mr. Greeley made a Tern- REVISITS EUROPE. 269 perance speech to a large audience. He was announced to speak at half-past 7 o clock. The hall was packed long before this time, and sundry local celebrities held forth. At the appointed moment, Mr. Greeley entered. His speech was strong in argument, and rich in humour and anecdote, every anecdote being also an argument. He was to proceed, making, meantime, a visit to Indian apolis, on the night train northward, having an engagement to lecture at LaPorte. For some reason, the train did not stop at one of the depots, and when Mr. Greeley reached the other, he found himself without the means of getting on. He expressed his feelings with astonishing energy. After some miles travel on a freight train, a hand-car and a number of Irishmen to work it were given him, and he was thus enabled, by a cold night ride, to meet his appointments in northern Indiana. Returning to New-York, Mr. Greeley had plenty to do during the following year, as we shall presently see, in fight ing the Kansas-Nebraska bill and Know-Nothingism. But before we recur again to an account of his political life, let us consider a little further of his individual adventures, which about this time were decidedly singular and interesting. In the Autumn of 1854, his wife, with their two surviving children, took passage for Europe, lie promising to join them early in the following year. As the children were less than six and four years old respectively, Mr. Greeley doubted the wife s courage to start on a journey without him to a continent where she had scarcely an acquaintance; but he at length said to her, "If you are really going, I must engage your passage;" she replied, " Engage it then," and he forthwith did so. Mrs. Greeley proceeded to London, where she spent the winter, and where Mr. Greeley joined her in April, 1855. In a few days he ran over in advance to Paris, and there hired a little cottage just outside of the then western barrier 1 Etoile or octroi gate, which separates the Avenue Champs Elysees from the street outside, that leads to the Bois de Boulogne. Here Mrs. Gree ley soon rejoined them with the children, two female friends, and the husband of one of them; and here was the little home of all for some two months, a period of sight-seeing. 270 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. On this voyage to Europe Mr. Greeley sailed in the Cunard steamship Asia. The weather was more pleasant than when he had before crossed the ocean, and he suffered less from sea sickness. Nevertheless, the voyage was a tedious bore to him. In a letter to The Tribune, written soon after his arrival in Paris, he describes the voyage out. I quote a passage which is both biographical and characteristic: I got one extra glimpse of sea-life by reason of the lack of a barber on the Asia in common with all the Cunarders Unschooled in the art ton- sorial, I had gone unshaved more than a week, and met the remonstrances of friends with a simple averment that what they urged was impossible. In this I was at length overheard by a seaman on deck, who interpleaded that if 1 would follow him I should be speedily and satisfactorily rendered beardless. I could hardly back out; so I followed him into the ship s forecastle, took vmy seat on a rough bench without a back, whereupon a rougher tar, with an instrument which he seems to have mistaken for a razor, performed the operation required, and pocketed a quarter therefor without grumbling. I did not offer him more, for my face was smarting at the time; but the sights and smells of that forecastle were richly worth a dollar. When we consider that there, in a space not cubically larger than two average prison-cells, some thirty or forty men live and sleep, without a crevice for ventilation, and in a reek of foul effluvia so dense as to defv description, how can we wonder that sailors often act like beasts on shore if they are forced to live so like beasts on water ? Ah, Messrs. Merchant Princes of New- York! before you waste one more dollar on attempts to improve the moral and religious condition of seamen, be entreated to secure them a chance to breathe pure air on board your own vessels, to sleep at least as heathfully and decently as your hogs ! Until you do this, preaching to them, scattering tracts and Bibles among them, and even building sailors homes for them on land, though all excellent in their time and place, will be just so much cash and effort thrown away In another letter Mr. G-reeley stated that he met no one who believed the empire would survive Napoleon III. No one spoke of the Emperor s patriotism or disinterestedness, even by way of joke, but the journalist observed that there was a general trust in his ability and confidence in his energy. " He is probably," said Mr. Greeley, "the most active, untiring ruler now living, and in this respect at least reminds the French of Napoleon le Grand. He has, besides, the undoubted courage, inscrutable pur-pose, and unwavering faith in his THE PAEIS EXPOSITION. 271 * star, which befit the heir of the first Bonaparte." Accord ing to Mr. Greelev s conviction, the Empire was France in a state of transition from monarchical to republican government. He observed that the intelligent workmen, the skilful artificers, the thinkers, the teachers, the observing, aspiring youth, were almost to a man republicans. Mr. Greeley was not nearly so favourably impressed with the Paris Exposition as he had been with the World s Fair at London four years previously. In his Recollections of a Busy Life, he says: " I spent much time in the Exposition, trying to comprehend it; but I was not a juror, as I had been in London four years previously, and I did not feel required to study this Exposition so persistently, so systematically, as I had studied the former. Besides, it did not impress me so favourably nor interest me so deeply as that did. The edifice was of stone; hence, far more massive, gloomy, crypt-like, than the Hyde Park marvel; and the French seemed to me inferior in the skill required for lucid arrangement and classification. This judgment may have been the dictate of prejudice or igno rance; I only speak as I felt, and record an abiding impression. Two hours of impulsive wandering and gazing in the Paris Exposition fatigued me more than four hours steady work as a juror in its London precursor; and I learned immeasura bly more from that of 51 than I did from that of 55. In fact, the only point on which my little all of knowledge seems to have been permanently enlarged by the latter is that I think I obtained here some faint, rude conception of the peculiarities and merits of the school of art termed pre-Raphaelite. I cannot say how aptly. I was deeply, though not altogether favourably, impressed by the works of J. E. Millais, Holman Hunt, and other apostles of this school, whose works here first arrested my attention; and I now recall a picture of The Dead Ophelia (by Millais, if I rightly remember), which evinced a pains-taking fidelity, and made a vivid, though un pleasant, impression. I trust that this school has not yet attained its fulness of development, or at least had not in 1855; if it had, the grand achievements of Raphael, of Titian, and of Murillo are in little danger of being eclipsed or super- 272 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEV. seded by those of its disciples or devotees. Still, the fact remains, that, of the many pictures exhibited in the Fine Arts division of the Paris Exposition, I remember none beside so distinctly, so vividly, as those of the British pre-Raphaelites, so called, though several of the French painters of our day evince decided merit." In a letter to The Tribune he thus takes leave of the Expo sition: I bid adieu to the World s Exhibition of 1855 in the conviction that 1 have not half seen it, and that nine-tenths of its visitors are even more ignorant of its contents than I am. Its immensity tends to confuse and bewilder; the eye glances rapidly from one brilliant object to another, while the mind fixes steadily upon none; so that he who wanders, fitfully gazing from court to court, from gallery to gallery, may carry away noth ing positive but a headache. You will.see hundreds jostling and crowding for a peep at the Imperial diamonds, crowns, &c., which are said to have cost several millions of dollars (by whom earned V how taken from them V). where a dozen can with difficulty be collected to witness the operation of a new machine calculated to confer signal benefits on the whole civilized world. Who looks at the self-adjusting windmill, which was first exhibited in our country last year ? Yet that, if it prove what it promises, will do mankind more service than all the diamonds ever diverted from their legitimate office of glass-cutting to lend a false, deceitful glitter to th<; brows of Tyranny and Crime. Here is a poor French artisan with a very simple contrivance for taking the long, coarse hairs from rabbit-skins, leaving the fine, soft fur to be removed by itself, the machine possibly costing twenty francs, and the dressing therewith of each skin hardly a cent, while the value of the fur is thereby doubled. This is a very small matter, which hardly any one regards; yet it is probably worth to Europe more than the annual cost of either of its royal families, or twenty times the value of them all. Mr. Greeley writes characteristically of his visit to The Invalides, "a great establishment," he says, "erected in the south Avest quarter of Paris by Louis XIV"., as a hospital or home for maimed, disabled, or worn-out soldiers surviving victims of the bloody phantom, Glory. * * Opposite the entrance of this church (that for the Invalides) rises the grand altar, resplendent, in gold, and lighted by side-windows with such art that, even in a dark, raining day, the whole seems to bask and blaze in the richest sunlight; and behind this, in what would seem to be an extension of the church, is the tomb TOMB OF NAPOLEON I. 273 of Napoleon I. Though you are within a few feet of this structure when near the errand altar in the church, YOU are O * compelled to go half a mile around to enter it, and I am not quite sure that the journey is repaid to those whose admiration of military or other despots is not stronger than mine. Here marble and porphyry, painting and sculpture, gilding and mosaic, have been lavished without stint, and some two millions of dollars wrested from the scanty earnings of an overtaxed peasantry to honour the bones of him who while living was so prodigal alike of their treasure and their blood. The author of this squandering idolatry was Louis Philippe, who thought he was ingratiating himself with the French people by pandering to the worship of the military Jugger naut, and whose family now live, as he himself died, in exile and humiliation, while the vast estates lie left them have been seized and confiscated by the nephew and heir of the Corsican he thus helped to defy. Who can pity the schemer thus caught in his own snare? Who can marvel that France, not yet full} cured of that passion for glory which exults over a victory because our side has won, and not because the universal sway of justice and equity has been brought nearer thereby, should find herself ground under the heel of a fresh despot, who tears their youth from their beloved homes and useful labours to swell the unripe harvest of death on the battle-field? I forget the name of the French Democrat who observed that his country could never enjoy true liberty until the ashes of Napoleon shall be torn from this costly mausoleum and throwr into the Seine, but I fully concur in his opinion.* A very remarkable adventure had Mr. Greeley during this visit to Paris, being nothing less than his incarceration for two days in a French prison. He told the story with great fulness in his letters to The Tribune, but his lengthy account of it in his Recollections of a Busy Life is, perhaps, even better: In the years 1852-53, an association of mainly wealthy and public-spirited New-Yorkers undertook to imitate, if not rival, the first great Exposition of the World s Industry at London in 1851. So they subscribed capita), obtained a charter from the State, and a plot of vacant ground from the city, employed architects and builders, and at length constructed OB 18 274 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Reservoir Square (Sixth Avenue and Fortieth to Forty-second streets), by far the most symmetrical and spacious edifice which our country has yet seen. The materials employed were almost wholly iron and glass, as in the case of the London prototype ; but though the British was a superb structure, ours was still more graceful and imposing. I doubt that many are yet born who will see Xew-York graced by a finer building than was her Crystal Palace, until destroyed by fire in 1858. Yet the Exhibition was doomed to failure from the start. It was located much too far up town, as much out of the way as it would to-day be at Harlem or Hoboken, it was but half finished, and nowise ready, when opened, and it steadily dragged, after the first few days, until, at the close of the season, it was found that the million or more of capital stock was all sunk, and the half-million bonds a very dubious investment. A desperate effort was made to retrieve its fallen fortunes next Spring; and I, with others, was then induced to take a hand in it as a director and (in a small way) bondholder. Mr. P. T. Barnuin was our most active, effi cient leader in this desperate effort at resurrection. There were several more directors who did their very best ; but the year (1854) was one of pecuniary pressure and revulsion, which combined with other influences to render success impossible. I gave much hard work and a little money to the attempt, while Mr. Barnum gave much more, but to no purpose ; we barely paid our heavy current expenses; and the Exposition closed with the season, nearly as bankrupt as when we undertook to resuscitate it. I went to Europe the next Spring (1855) without a suspicion that 1 should there be held accountable for our inability to wrest victory from defeat; yet, about 4 r. M. of the 2(1 day of June, after I had returned from a day s observation in the French "Palace of Industry," I was waited on at my little cottage by four French strangers, who soon gave me to under stand that they were officers of the law, bearing a writ issued by Judge do Belleyme, of the Court of Premier Instance, at the suit of one M. Lechesne, a Parisian sculptor, who swore that he had contributed to our New- York Exhibition a statue (in plaster) which had there been broken, or mutilated ; for which he claimed of me, as a director, " represontant et solidaire," of the Exhibition, "douze mille francs," or $2,500 in gold. "When we had, by the help of my courier, arrived at some approach to a mutual understanding, one element of which was my refusal to pay to M. Lechesne $2,500, or any sum whatever, they said that I must enter their carriage and accompany them forthwith to the Judge, some three miles away ; which, attended by my courier, I did. We had to call for Lechesne and his lawyer by the way, which consumed nearly an hour, they being in no hurry ; and, when we had told the Judge our respective stories, I proposed to go to the American Legation and persuade Don Piatt, Esq.. Secretary of Legation, to guarantee my appearance for trial when wanted. The Judge pronounced this sufficient ; so we set forth on another long ride to the Legation ; where not only Judge Piatt, but another friend, Maunsel B. Field, Esq., offered himself as security for my appearance at court; but now Lechesne and his lawyer refused, on the ground of Mr. Piatt s exemp- IN A FRENCH PRISON. 27 5 tion from arrest on civil process, to take him as security, or (in fact) to take anything but the cash they were intent on. High words passed, and a scuffle was imminent, when I insisted on being driven at once to prison, my guardians having affected a fear that I would escape them. Crossing the Avenue Champs Elysee, densely thronged at that hour (6 P. M.), our carriage came into violent collision with another, and was disabled ; when a very superfluous display of vigilance and pistols was made by my keep ers, who could not be persuaded that I was intent on sticking to them like a brother. At last, a little before 7 p. M., we reached our destination, and I was admitted, through several gigantic iron doors, with gloomy crypts between them, to the office of the prison, where I was told that I must stay till 9% p. M., because the Judge had allowed me so long to procure bail. Here my guardians left me in safe-keeping, while I ordered a frugal dinner, instead of the sumptuous public one at the Trois Freres, given by Mr. M. B. Field, which I had been invited, and had fully expected, to attend; and I sent my courier home to quiet the apprehension of my fam ily, who as yet knew only that some strangers had called for me, and that I had gone off with them. Very soon, Judge Mason (John Y.), our Ambassador, called, and was admitted to see me, though it was now too late by the regulations. I explained the matter to him, assured him that I wanted nothing but a good lawyer, and insisted on viewing the whole matter in a more cheerful light than it wore in his eyes. " But your wife will surely be distressed by it," he urged ; " she being an utter stranger here, with two young children." Xo," I replied; a trifle might annoy her; but this matter looks serious, and it will only calm and strengthen her. I have sent our courier to assure her that it is all right, and request her to keep away from this, and go on with her visiting and sight-seeing, as though nothing had happened." " I have heard you called a philosopher, and I now see that you deserve the distinction," was the Judge s rejoinder, as, at my request, he left me. Half an hour had scarcely passed, giving me barely time to eat my din ner, when my wife was ushered in, accompanied by Mrs. Piatt and our little son, whose eyes were distended with grave wonder at the iron bar riers through which he had reached me. " Good woman," I observed to Mrs. Greeley, " I have been bragging to Judge Mason how quietly you would take this mischance ; but here you are in jail at nightfall, when visitors are not allowed, as though you were addicted to hysterics." " But con sider," she urged in mitigation, " that I first heard of your position from Francis [our courier], who comes flying home to assure me that there is nothing serious, to urge me not to be frightened, when he is trembling all over with anxiety and terrour. Hardly had he left the room, when Mrs. Piatt comes in equal haste to beg me to fear nothing, that all is but a trifle, and she is quite as agitated and panic-stricken as Francis. Neither of them seems to understand the matter ; so I thought I must come to you for an explanation." This I gave; when they departed; and I was at last allowed to go up to my lodging, which I find thus described in my letter thence to The Tribune : 276 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. "By 10 o clock, each of us lodgers had retired to our several apartments (each eight feet by five), and an obliging functionary came around and locked out all rascally intru ders. I don t think I ever before slept in a place so perfectly secure. At 6 this morning, this extra protection was withdrawn, and each of us was thenceforth required to keep watch over his own valuables. We uniformly keep good hours here in Clichy, which is a virtue that not many large hotels in Paris can boast of. "The bedroom appointments are notof a high order, as is reasonable, since we are only charged for them four sous (cents) per night, washing extra. The sheets are rather of a hiclvoi-y so/t. but mine were given to me clean; the bed is indifferent, but I have slept ouwo.sa; the window lacks a curtain or blind, but in its stead there are four strong upright iron bars, which are a perfect safeguard against getting up in the night, and fall ing or pitching out, so as to break your neck, as any one who fell thence would certainly do. (I am in the fifth or highest story.) Perhaps one of my predecessors was a som nambulist. I have two chairs, two little tables ^probably one of them extra, through some mistake), and a cupboard which may once have been clean. The pint washbowl, half-pint pitcher, &c., I have ordered, and am to pay extra for. I am a little ashamed to own that my repose has been indifferent; but then I never do sleep well in a strange place. 11 As it was Saturday evening when I was taken to jail, I could not expect a release before Monday; in fact, the lawyers who were applied to in my behalf had all gone out of town, and could not be found till that day. I rose on Sunday morning in a less placid frame of mind than I had cher ished over night, and devoted a good part of the day to concocting an account of the matter meant to be satirical, and to "chaff" mankind in general by contrasting the ways of Clichy with those of the outside world, to the dispraise of the latter. Here is a specimen: " I say nothing of Liberty, save to caution outsiders in France to be equally modest; but Equality 1 and Fraternity I have found here more thoroughly than elsewhere in Europe. Still, we have not realized the social millennium, even in Clichy. Some of us were wont to gain our living by the hardest and most meagrely rewarded labour; others to live idly and sumptuously on the earnings of others. Of coiirse, these vices of an irra tional and decaying social state are not instantly eradicated by our abrupt transfer to this mansion. Some of us can cook; while others only know how to eat, and so require assistance in the preparation of our food, as none is cooked or even provided for us, and our intercourse with the outer world is subject to limitations. Those of us who lived generously aforetime, and are in for gentlemanly sums, are very apt to have money; while the luckless chaps who were sent here for owing a beggarly hundred francs or so, and have no fixed income beyond the single franc per day which each creditor must pay, < r his debtor is turned loose, are very glad to earn money by doing us acts of kindness. One of these attached himself to me immediately on my induction into my apartment, and proceeded to make my bed, bring me a pitcher of water and wash-bowl, matches, lights, &c., for which I expect to pay him, these articles being reckoned superfluities in Clichy. But no such aristocratic distinction as master no such degrading appella tion as servant is tolerated in this community: this philanthropic fellow-boarder is known to all here as my auxiliary. 1 Where has the stupid world outside known how to drape the hard realities of life with fig-leaf so graceful as this? " So of all titular distinctions. We pretend that we have abjured titles of honour in America; and the consequence is that everyone has a title, either Honourable. or General, 1 or Colonel, 1 or Ileverend, 1 or, at the very least, Esquire. But here in Clichy all such empty and absurd prefixes or suffixes are absolutely unknown; even names, Christian or family, are discarded as useless, antiquated lumber. Every lodger is known by the number of his apartment only, which no one thinks of designating a cell. Mine is 139: so, whenever a friend calls, he gives two cents to a commissionaire, who comes in from the outer regions to the great hall sacred to our common use, and begins IN A FRENCH PRISON. 277 calling out cent -trente-neuf (phonetically son-tran-nuf ) at the top of his voice, and goes on, yelling as he climbs in the hope of finding or calling me short of ascending to my fifth-story sanctuary. To nine-tenths of my comrades in adversity I am known only as son-tran-nnf. My auxiliary is No. 54; so I, when I need his aid, go singing sankon- cat, after the same fashion. Equality being thus rigidly preserved, maugre some diver sities of fortune, the jealousies, rivalries, and heart-burnings, which keep the mass of mankind in a ferment, are here absolutely unknown. I never before talked with so many people intimate with each other without hearing something said or insinuated to one another s prejudice; here, there is nothing of the sort. Some folks outside are fitted with reputations which they would hardly consider flattering. some laws and usages get the blessing they so richly deserve, but among ourselves is naught but har mony and good-will. How would the Hotel de Ville, or even the Tuileries like to compare notes with us on this head? " A Yankee prisoner, who had seen me in New-York, recognized me as I came down stairs on Sunday morning, and blazoned his inference that I was in jail by some mistake, so I was soon surrounded by sympathizing fellow jail-birds, several of whom were no more justly liable to imprison ment than I was. In a little while, M. Vattemare, well known in his day as the projector of systematic international exchanges of books and docu ments, having heard of my luck at Mr. Field s dinner the evening previous, made his way in, with proffers of service, which I turned to account by obtaining, through him, from some great library, copies of the Revised Statutes and Session Laws of New York, which clearly demonstrated my legal irresponsibility to M. Lechesne for his damaged statue. Soon, other friends began to pour in, with offers of money and service; but I could not afford to be bailed out nor bought out, as fifty others would thereby be tempted to repeat M. Lechesne s experiment upon me, so I was compelled to send them away, with my grateful acknowledgements. Among my visitors was M. Hector Bossange, the well-known publisher, who had been accustomed to call at my rooms each Sunday, as he did on this one, and was soon asked by my wife, " Have you seen Mr. Greeley ?" "Seen him! " he perplexedly responded, "I do not understand you; have I not called to see him?" "Then you have not heard that he is in prison ? " " In prison," he wildly inquired ; " what can that mean ? " "I do not well understand it myself," she replied ; " but it has some connec tion with our New- York Crystal Palace." " O, it is money, is it?" joyfully rejoined M. Bossange: "then we will soon have him out, I feared it was political" He knew that I was a furious anti-Imperialist, and feared that I had really involved myself in some plot that exposed me to arrest as an apostle of sedition, an enemy of "order." Our remaining visitors having been barred out when the clock struck 4 p. M., we two Americans, with two Englishmen, a Frenchman, and an Italian, sent out our order, and had our dinner in the cell of one of us, who, being an old settler, had an apartment somewhat more roomy and less exalted than mine. Each brought to the common "spread " whatever he had of table-ware or pocket-cutlery ; and the aggregate, though there were still deficiencies, answered the purpose. The dinner cost fifty cents per head, of which a part went as toll to some officer or turnkey, and there was still a good margin of profit to the restaurateur. Still, there was 278 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. wine for those who would drink it ; but stronger liquors are not allowed in Clichy, in spite of the assurance, so often heard, that prohibitory legis lation is unknown in France. A. flask of cut-throat-looking brandy had, however, been smuggled in for one of our party ; and this was handed around and sipped as though it were nectar. Men love to circumvent the laws for the gratification of their appetites; and yet I judge that not one gill of spirits is drank in Clichy, where quarts were poured down while every one was free to order and drink so long as he could pay. I presume I had had more calls that day than any other prisoner, though Sunday is specially devoted to visits ; and, though grateful for the kindless and zeal for my release evinced by several of my friends, I was thoroughly weary when the lingerers were invited to take their departure, and the doors clanged heavily behind them. I could then appreciate the politeness with which M. Ouvrard, Napoleon s great army-contractor, after he had fallen into embarrassments and been lodged in Clichy by his inexorable creditors, was accustomed, when visitors called, to send to the grating his faithful valet, who, with the politest bow and shrug whereof he was master, would say, " I am sorry, sir, very sorry ; but my master, M. Ouvrard, is out." This was not even the "white lie " often instigated by good society ; since the visitor could not fail to understand that the great bankrupt could be out in none other than that conventional, metaphorical sense which implies merely preoccupation, or unwillingness to be button holed and bored. No prisoner in Clichy is obliged to see a visitor unless of his own choice ; and, as one is frequently called dow r n to the grating to have a fresh writ served on him, thereby magnifying the obstacles to his liberation, the rule that a visitor must make a minute of his errand on his card, and send it up, before an interview is accorded, is one founded in reason, and very generally and properly adhered to. Yet a fellow-prisoner, who received notice that he was called for at the grate, went recklessly down on the day after my incarceration, only to greet a tip-staff, and be served with a fresh writ. "Sir," said the beguiled and indignant boarder at this city hermitage, " if you ever serve me such a trick again, you will go out of here half killed." Some official underling was violently suspected of lending himself to this stratagem ; and great was the indignation excited thereby throughout our community; but the victim had only himself to blame, for not standing on his reserved rights, and respecting the usages and immunities of our sanctuary. I was puzzled, but not offended, at a question put me the moment I had fairly entered the prison: "Have you ever been confined here before?" I respectfully, but positively, replied in the negative, that this was my first experience of the kind. I soon learned, however, that the question was a prescribed and necessary one, that, if I had ever before been imprisoned on this allegation of debt, or on any other, and this had been lodged against me, I was not liable to a fresh detention thereon, but must at once be discharged. The rule is a good one ; and, though I was unable then to profit by it, it may serve me another time. IN A FRENCH PRISON. 279 My general conclusion, from all I observed and heard in Clichy, imports that imprisonment for debt was never a bar to improvidence, nor a curb to prodigality; that, in so far as it ever aided or hastened the collection of honest debts, it wrenched five dollars from sympathizing relatives and friends for every one exacted from the debtors themselves; and that it was, and could not fail to be, fruitful only in oppression and extortion, much oftener enforcing the payment of unjust claims than of just ones. Let whoever will sneer at human progress and uneasy, meddling philan thropy, I am grateful that I have lived in the age which gave the death blow to Slavery and to Imprisonment for Debt. To get into prison is a feat easy of achievement by almost any one ; it is quite otherwise with getting out. You cannot fully realize how rigid stone walls and iron doors are till they stand between you and sunshine, impeding locomotion, and forbidding any but the most limited change of place. The restless anxiety of prisoners for release, no matter how light their cares, how ample their apartments, how generous their fare, can never be appreciated by one who has not had a massive key turned upon him, and found himself on the wrong side of an impregnable wall. Doubtless, we hear much nonsense whereof " Liberty " is the burden ; but, if you are skeptical as to the essential worth of Freedom, just allow your self to be locked up for a while, with no clear prospect of liberation at any specified or definite time. Though I was but forty-eight hours in Clichy, time dragged heavily on my hands, after the friends who, in generous profusion, visited me on Sunday had been barred and locked out, and I was left for a second night to my fellow jail-birds and my gloomy reflections. "I can t get out," was the melancholy plaint of Sterne s starling; and I had occasion to believe that so many detainers or claims similar to Lechesne s would, on Monday, be lodged against me, as to render doubtful my release for weeks, if not for months. It was late on Monday morning before my active friends outside could procure me the help I needed ; but, when they did, I had, through M. Vattemare s valued aid, the books I required, and had my references and citations all ready for service. With these in hand, my lawyers went before Judge de Belleyme to procure my release; but M. Vattemare had been there already, as well as to M. de Langle, the judge of a still higher court, to testify thet the Americans were generally indignant at my incar- ceration, and were threatening to leave Paris in a body if I were not promptly liberated. Even M. James Rothschild, I was told, had made an indignant speech about it at a dinner on Saturday evening; saying to hia friends: "We are most of us directors in the Exposition now in progress here, and of course liable to be arrested and imprisoned in any foreign country we may visit, on a complaint that some one has had articles dam aged or lost here, if Mr. Greeley may be so held in this action." These representations impelled M. de Belleyme to say, in perfect truth, that he had not ordered my imprisonment, on the contrary, he had directed the plaintiff and his lawyer to take Mr. Don Piatt s guaranty that I should be on hand, when wanted, to respond to this action. So 280 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. when, ut the instance of my lawyers, M. Lechesne and his attorneys were called to confront them before the Judge on Monday, and were asked by him how they came to take me to Clichy, under the circumstances, they could only stammer out that they had reflected that Mr. Piatt was not subject to imprisonment in like case, therefore his guaranty was no security. This, of course, did not satisfy the Judge, who ordered my telease on the instant; so by 4 p. M. all formalities were concluded, and vny lawyers appeared with the documents required to turn me into the street. Meantime, I had had so many visitors, who sent up good-looking cards, and wore honest faces, that I had manifestly risen in the estimation of my jailers, who had begun to treat me with ample consideration. The neighbouring servants, who were intimate with ours, had witnessed my departure with the officers, and knew, of course, that this was an irrest x but pretended to our servants not to understand it. One after mother of them would call on our employes to ask, "Why, where is Mr. Q^reeley?" "He has gone over to London on a little business," was the prompt reply, "and will be back in a day or two." This was accepted with many a sly wink and gentle shrug; the inquisitors having obviously united in the conclusion that I was a swindler, who had robbed some bank or vault, and fled from my own country to enjoy the fruits of my depredations. When, however, I came quietly home in a cab about the time indicated by our servants, they greatly exulted over the hoped-for, rather than expected, denouement, while their good-natured friends were correspondingly disconcerted by the failure of their calculations. On our part, we resumed at once our round of visiting and sight-seeing, as though nothing had happened ; but my little son s flying hair and radiant face, as he rushed down stairs to greet my return, will not soon be forgotten. He had been told that it was all right, when he found and left me in prison, and had tried hard to believe it ; but my return, unattended and unguarded, he knew to be right. I had a tedious legal squabble thereafter, for my liberation did not, of course, abate M. Lechesne s suit against me, and had to send to New-York for documents and affidavits; meantime going to Switzerland with mv family, as I have already related, and I was signally aided in my defense by Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, who happened to be in Paris at the time; but, as there was really-^ no case against me, I was at length enabled to demonstrate that fact to the satisfaction of the functionary who had been deputed to hear and report on the suit to the Tribunal of Com merce, before whom I had been cited by Lechesne, a proceeding wholly illegal, my lawyers asserted, as neither party to the action was a merchant. My counsel wished to demur to the jurisdiction, saying that the Tribunal was not a court of law, and always decided for a Frenchman against a foreigner, no matter how unjustly. At length, however, when my docu ments arrived from New-York, they could hold off no longer, but went before the officer in question, where my opponents were most reluctant to meet them, asking for time to send to America for documents also! We understood that this was only a pretext to avoid a judgment for costs, they THE GLACIERS. 2S1 did not really want to send to America, and did not send. We let them off on that excuse, however, and I came away, leaving the suit stone dead I rejoice that imprisonment for debt was recently abolished in France, I trust forever. I doubt that it ever ^nade one debtor even outwardly honest; I am sure it often compelled the relatives and friends of prodigals to pay debts which should never have been contracted. It is wrong it is immoral to trust those who do not deserve credit, it is doubly wrong to impose the payment of such debts upon some frugal unc.le or brother of the debtor, in pity for that debtor s weeping wife and children. "Let every tub stand on its own bottom," is a sound rule, which imprisonment for debt tends strongly to subvert. Men are trusted who should not be, on the calculation, " I can get my pay out of his relatives by putting him into jail;" hence tavern-scores and merchants accounts where cash down would have precluded extravagance and dissipation. The civilized world is not yet prepared for the repeal of all laws designed to enforce the col lection of simple debts (not trusts); but this reform must coine in due time, when mankind will wonder why it could so long have been resisted. False credit credit to those who do not deserve, and will be rather harmed than helped by it is the bane of our civili/ation. Every second man you meet is struggling with debts which he never should have con tracted. We need a legal reform, which will greatly diminish our ctirrent facilities for running into debt. In the latter part of June, Mr. Greeley visited the Alp? again, this time with his family. The journey and the stay at Chamonix are thus described: On my later visit to Europe, I left Paris with my family in June; trav elled by rail to Dijon, capital of the kingdom of Burgundy that was, the palace of whose kings is now a museum of deeply interesting relics of that monarchy, and, after spending a bright day there, we took diligence at 9 p. M., were toiling up the Jura next forenoon, and were soon rattling- down their southeastern slope, whence we reached Geneva before night. Passing thence up the valley of the Arve to Chamonix, we spent five days there in deeply interested observation of the adjacent peaks and glaciers. I gave one day to a visit to Montanvert and the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice), across which cattle are annually driven a practical path being first made by cutting ice and filling crevices to a sunny southern slope ("the Gar den"), 9,000 feet above tide level, on an adjacent mountain, where they are pastured till snow falls and lies, and then driven back to the valley whence they came. The ice of the Mer de Glace is so frequently seamed with deep cracks and crevices as to afford most unsafe footing for novices in Alpine pedestrianism ; and I, for one, was glad to turn about, when I had gone but half-way across it, and regain the solid ground I had eagerly left. You climb thence nearly a thousand feet to a perch known as Montanvert, whence a good view is had, in clear-weather, of several lofty peaks, Mont Blanc included; and when I had thence made my way down to Chamonix 282 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. (you ascend on horse or mule back, but descend slowly on foot), I was as weary as any one need wish to be. During my absence on this trip, my wife had undertaken to visit, with our children, the Glacier de Boissons, which seems scarcely a mile distant from the hotels at Chamonix, and easily accessible ; but she had failed to reach it, lost her way and been obliged to hire a peasant-w r oman to pilot her, and carry our fagged-out younger child, back to our hotel. I laughed at this misadventure when we met, and volunteered to lead the party next morning straight up to the glacier aforesaid, so that they might put their hands on it ; but, on trying it, I failed miserably. So many deep ravines and steep moraines were found to bar our way, where all seemed smooth and level from our hotel, and the actual was so much greater than the apparent distance, that I gave up, after an hour s rugged clambering, and contented myself with asserting that I could reach the glacier by myself, as I still presume I could, though I never tried. Either of the great gla ciers is so large that it dwarfs everything around it; belittling obstacles and distances to an extent elsewhere incredible. The Glacier des Bois is said to measure over fifty miles from the giant snow-drift wherein it originates, filling an indentation or gully leading down the east side of Mont Blanc, to the very bed of the Arve in the Chamonix valley. Indeed, the Mer de Glace itself may be considered a branch, if not the principal source, of the little river, and is approaches by following up the bed of the stream for a couple of miles or so above the village, then stepping from one to another of the giant boulders, brought down by the glacier from the icy region above, and which here fill the spacious bed of the stream. I spent a forenoon here, watching the gradual dissolution of the ice by the warm breath of the valley, and noting how moraines are made. A moraine is a ridge or bank of earth and stones, averaging four to eight feet high, and perhaps ten to twenty in width at the base, which is uni formly found bordering a glacier on either side, with one far larger oftener two or more at its lower extremity. It is so unfailingly sepa rated by distances of ten to twenty feet from the glacier, that the green observer finds it difficult to comprehend that it is naturally formed of the points and fragments of rock broken off by the giant masses of ice in their imperceptible, yet constant progress at the average rate of six feet or so per day from the snow-drifts cradled between the higher peaks to the deep valleys, green with grass, and crimson with Alpine flowers. But steady observation detects a constant wearing away, in warm weather, of the lower part of the glacier facing the valley, and a conse quent formation of cavities and channels therein, whereby the stones are loosened and allowed to precipitate themselves. But, while the water falls directly downward, the stones fall outward, or, striking a lower slope of ice, are so deflected from the perpendicular that they rest at last at some distance outward from the base of the glacier. Hence moraines. We were in Chamonix, I believe, from the 20th to the 25th of June, too early by a month. Snow fell repeatedly, though lightly ; rain fre- LONDON. 283 quently and heavily ; the mountain tops were usually shrouded in cloud and fog; and we only caught a clear view of the summit of Mont Blanc on the morning of our departure. Swamp Alder (a large shrub with us) here attaining the size of a considerable tree, so that it is frequently split into fence-rails ; and stretches of meadow, carpeted and blazing with the deep scarlet of innumerable flowers, are among my recollections of that lofty, high-walled valley, so deeply embosomed in the Alps, and so rich in everything that renders the vicinage of mountains attractive to civilized man. Returning to Geneva, the party took steamboat on Lake Leraan to Lusanne, whence they journeyed by diligence to Berne. Thence they intended to journey to Interlachen and the Bernese Oberland, but the sudden illness of one of the children prevented. They hastened back to the lovely little city of Lusanne, where Mr. Greeley left his family, and by Neufchatel, Basle, and Strasburg, proceeded to Paris. There he remained two or three weeks, and then went to London. His letters from London show that he thought vastly more of that city than of Paris. "London," he said, "deepen? its impressions upon me with each visit; nay, I rarely spend a day within its vast circumference without increasing wonder and admiration. It is the capital, if not of the civilized, cer tainly of the commercial world, civilized and otherwise. To her wharves the raw produce of all climes and countries, to her vaults the gold of California and Australia, to her cabinets the gems of Golconda and Brazil, insensibly gravitate. From this mighty heart radiate the main arteries of the world s trade; a great crash here brings down leading and long-established houses in the South Pacific or the Yellow Sea. I dropped in to day on an old friend whom I had known ten or fifteen years ago as a philosophic radical and social reformer in America. I found him in a great sugar-house under the shadow of the Bank, cor recting a Price Current which he edits, having just made up a telegraphic dispatch for his house s correspondents in Bombay. I found him calm and wise as ever; more practical, some would say, but still hopeful of the good time coming; he had been several years with that house, and he told me his income was quite satisfactory, and that his eldest son was doing very well in Australia. * * * There is much mistaken pride and 284: LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. false dignity in England; but if a Briton insists on being proud of London, I shall not quarrel with him on that head." He thought that the better order of speaking in the House of Commons surpassed that of the American House of Rep resentatives, but that the average ability in London as evinced in speaking was below that of Washington City. The English, he thought, were unskilful in varnishing vice. Of Paris he said: Paris is the Paradise of thoughtless boys with full pockets ; but I, if ever thoughtless, had ceased to be a boy some time ere I first greeted the "gay, bright, airy city of the Seine." I presume I could now enjoy a week of the careless, sunny life of her mob of genteel idlers: but a month of it would sate and bore me. To rise reluctantly to a late breakfast; trifle away the d;iy, from noon to 5 p. M., in riding and sight-seeing ; dine elabo rately ; and thenceforward spend the evening at theatre, opera, or party, is a routine that soon tells on one who is indurated in the habit of making the most of every working-hour. I envy no man his happiness; I envy least of all the pleasure-sekeer, who chases his nimble, coquettish butter fly, year in, year out, along the Boulevards and around the "Places" of the giddy metropolis of France. He embarked at Liverpool under the deep impression that something had gone wrong with his family, a presentiment which gave him solicitude throughout the homeward voyage, which, on account of sea-sickness, was one of even unusual torture. Upon reaching New- York, he learned that his mother had died upon the day of his departure from Liverpool. CHAFTEE XVI. CAMPAIGN OF 1852 THE WHIG PARTY EXIT. i he Dawn of a New Political Era The Political Canvass of 1852 The Nominations Mr. Greeley Mildly Supports General Scott, and "Spits Upon the Platform" His Individual Platform A Lively Campaign Terminating in Utter Rout. HOBACE GBEELEY had now cooperated with the Whig party since its organization, but from the year 1848 with diminished zeal. Theretofore, his "abstractions" had been upon subjects other than political; his "visions" had turned his eyes upon other scenes. His philanthropy, broad and earnest as it ever was, had not been practically exercised in behalf of the slave. He had thought closely, worked with singular fervour in behalf of the labouring man. That which was called his Socialism was, with him, the Emancipation of Labour; that which was derisively called his " Fourierite bill " was the germ of the beneficent Homestead policy. Herein he was so far in advance of his times, until at last he dragged the times up to him, that, as is usual in such cases, he was the common butt of satire and obloquy. But in politics, he was extremely practical. He doubtless considered the abolitionists " fanatics." He surely saw the dawn of a new political era almost as early as any one. If this be claiming too much, it will be agreed that, almost as soon as any one, he saw the sun go down on the old era with abiding trust that it would soon again shine forth in a brighter, better day. . With him the political canvass of 1852 was the night between the old era of small issues and the new one of great questions, upon the settlement of which depended the cause of freedom and the eventual happiness of all mankind. This presidential campaign, so far as the two great political parties were concerned, was a fraud. The people were delib erately deceived by both those parties, as after events demon- 286 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. strated. Tlie Democratic party was the first to meet in con vention. The meeting occurred at Baltimore on the 1st of June, and after a long struggle, no less than forty-nine ballots, resulted in the nomination of General Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, as candidate for President. On the second ballot, Senator William R. King, of Alabama, was selected as the candidate for Vice-President. Mr. Pierce was a man of amiable character and respectable talents, but was little known to the country. Mr. King was a sagacious statesman of the pro-slavery school; a gentleman of noble nature, but sinking under a load of physical disease, which laid him low in death before he could assume the duties of the office to which he was elected. The Whigs held their convention in the same city on the 16th of the same month. They had made a great deal of fun of the Democrats for being so long unable to agree upon a candidate. They were too fast; for, though their rules only required a majority to nominate, they could not agree upon a candidate until more than fifty ballots had been taken. Gen eral Winfield Scott was successful, his principal competitors being President Millard Fillmore, and the illustrious states man Daniel Webster. Hon. William A. Graham, of North Carolina, was nominated for Yice-President. General Scott appeared to Mr. Greeley a preposterous candidate; and Mr. Greeley does not seem to have been in the wrong. A great soldier, General Scott was wonderfully unfitted for the conduct of civil affairs. The convention of the Free-Soil Democracy was held af Pittsburgh in August. Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, after wards the distinguished Senator and Yice-President of the United States, presided. An eloquent orator, a faithful friend of freedom and of the labouring man, and ever believed to be- a person of unflinching pluck until his courage and much of his manhood oozed out at the ends of his fingers when con fronted by that black knight called Credit Mobilier, Mr. Wilson had at this time recently entered upon a career of fame and usefulness, whose sad ending must be forever lamented. The convention over which he presided nominated John P. A PRIVATE PLATFORM. 287 Hale, of Massachusetts, for President, and George W. Julian, of Indiana, for Yice- President. The former became one of the most famous of Senators, and the latter won more substantial and enduring if less brilliant renown in the House of Repre sentatives. The convention adopted a platform of ringing principles worthy of a great party, whereas the platforms ol the Whigs and Democrats, were trifling, subservient, and worse. Mr. G-reeley s logical position in this campaign was with the Free-Soilers. Nevertheless he supported the Whig candidates, but spat upon the platform. He assigned these reasons for supporting Messrs. Scott and Graham: " 1. They can be elected, and the others can t. 2. They are openly and thoroughly for PROTECTION TO HOME IN- OUSTRY, while the others (judged by their supporters) lean to Free Trade. " 3. Scott and Graham are backed by the general support of those who hold with us, that government may and should do much positive good." It is clear that at this time Mr. Greeley thought the claims upon statesmanship of a few manufactures entitled to greater consideration than a vast system of nameless wrongs enslaving three millions of persons. His own platform was tersely set forth in an article in The Tribune: " OUR PLATFORM. " I. As to the Tariff: Duties on Imports specific so far as practicable, affording ample protection to undeveloped or peculiarly exposed branches of our National Industry, and adequate revenue for the support of the government and the payment of its debts. Low duties, as a general rule, on rude, bulky staples, whereof the cost of transportation is of itself equiv alent to a heavy impost, and high duties on such fabrics, wares, etc., as come into depressing competition with our own depressed infantile or endangered pursuits. " II. As to National Works : Liberal appropriations yearly for the improvement of rivers and harbours, and such eminently national enter prises as the Saut Ste. Marie canal and the Pacific railroad from the Mis sissippi. Cut down the expenditures for forts, ships, troops, and warlike enginery of all kinds, and add largely to those for works which do not perish in the using. but will remain for ages to benefit our people, strengthen the Union, and contribute far more to the national defence than the costly machinery of war ever could. " III. As to Foreign Policy : Do unto others [the weak and oppressed 288 LIFE OF HORACE (JKEELEY. as well a- the powerful and mighty] as we would have them do unto us. No shuffling, no evasion of duties nor shirking of responsibilities, but a firm front to despots, a prompt rebuke to every outrage on the law of Nations, aud a generous, active sympathy with the victims of tyranny and usurpation. " IV. As to Slavery : No interference by Congress with its existence in any slave State, but a firm and vigilant resistance to its legalization in any national Territory, or the acquisition of any foreign Territory wherein slaver}- may exist. .A perpetual protest against the hunting of fugitive slaves in free States as an irresistible cause of agitation, ill feeling, and alienation between the North and the South. A firm, earnest, inflexible testimony, -in common with the whole non-slaveholding Christian world, that human slavery, though legally protected, is morally wrong, and ought to be speedily terminated. V. As to State Rights : More regard for and less cant about them. VI. ONE PRESIDENTIAL TERM, and no man a candidate for any office while wielding the vast patronage of the national executive. "VII. REFORM IN CONGRESS: Payment by the session, with a rigour- ous deduction for each day s absence, and a reduction and straightening of mileage. We would suggest $2,000 compensation for the first (or long), and $1,000 for the second (or short) session ; with ten cents per mile for travelling (by a bee-line) to and from Washington." The campaign was an animated one. Many Whigs were deceived, sincerely believing that General Scott would be elected. The Tribune warmed up during the canvass, and made a spirited fight for the success of the party, not even manifesting disgust upon the receipt of the reports of a few public addresses delivered by General Scott, the ill taste of some of whose expressions gave the opposition great food for laughter and his friends large excuse for a free use of energetic epithets. The result was overwhelming defeat of the Whigs, General Scott receiving the votes of only four States Massa chusetts, Vermont, Kentucky ,"and Tennessee. Had the Free- Soil votes which were cast for Mr. Hale been cast for Scott, he would even then have received only the votes of Connecticut and Ohio in addition. Mr. Greeley correctly regarded this utter rout as decisive of the fate of the Whig party. The Tribune soon began to speak of " the late AVhig party;" and it was not long till The Tribune Almanac took the place of that which for many years, under the name of The Whig Almanac, had been the best compen- THE NEW ERA. 289 dinm of political statistics of the country, recognized as an authority by the intelligent of all parties. For the cause of Labour, for Free Homes, for Temperance, for Protection, for a wider freedom of opinion and of speech than conventional trammels, had yet allowed, for the Slave, Mr. Greeley and his journal now laboured more efficiently than before. He had enlisted under a better banner, and in the great conflicts of the new political era, took position at the front and maintained it to the last. 19 CHAPTEE XYII. MR. GREELEY AND THE NEW POLITICAL ERA. Review of Mr. Greeley s Past Political Life Of the Parties of the Times The Day of Small Things The Compromise Measures of 1850 Mr. Greeley s Opinion of Them Renewed Agitation of the Slavery Question The Political Influence of Mrs. Stowe s Novel, "Uncle Tom s Cabin " Of the Public Press Mr. Greeley Departs on the New Departure. MR. GREELEY S political life, thus far, had been passed most of the time in the minority. From the time he cast his first vote up to the dissolution of the Whig party, he had been on the losing side at every election except two. The untimely death of President Harrison, followed by the apostacy of Presi dent Tyler, made the magnificent triumph of 1840 something worse than a barren victory. He only brought up the rear in the campaign which resulted in the success of General Taylor. If he had not been on the winning side in respect of men, he could show very little, in the recognized policy of the nation, for which, up to this time, the nation was indebted to his mind or his influence. In truth, the two parties, forming the bulk of the people, which contended for the possession of power during these years, were all the time in dispute over abstract questions of government, in which the Democracy were quite generally in the right, and over practical questions, the settlement of which, one way or the other, would have made no great difference, perhaps, in respect of the develop ment of the country and the permanent establishment of free institutions. We are told to not despise the day of small things. Perhaps this was about the only wise injunction the political disputants of the times under review generally obeyed. It is astonishing how much eloquence was poured forth in behalf of dredging the sand out of harbours and of removing the snags out of rivers. There was no end of caustic invective SMALL ISSUES. 291 against the government of the United States for sins which were justly chargeable against drunken pilots or sleepy com manders of vessels. What was supposed to be the beginning of a magnificent system of internal improvements, was inau gurated by august ceremonies, the President of the United States himself "breaking ground" on a "National Road," by the side of which men may now travel by rail, and look in vain upon that obsolete thoroughfare for so much evidence of domestic commerce as might be shown by a pea-nut cart, drawn or driven by an exile of Erin. Great ingenuity was exhibited in the discussion of the tariff question, that of national banks, and other similar topics. Vituperation was elevated into one of the Coarse Arts. It makes one ashamed of his race and his country to read what the Whigs said and wrote about Andrew Jackson, and what the Democrats said and wrote about Henry Clay; what the Democrats said of Harrison, and what the Whigs said of Van JBuren. Thus were the minds of the people occupied upon trivial topics, and their attention called away from that great wrong whose baleful influence was as subtle as it was prodigious. But if the abuse of each other by the great contending parties were so disrepu table, what shall be said of the treatment of the abolitionists by both these parties! The most abused of all men of the republic were those who best represented republicanism ; who were devoted most wisely to the true interests of the nation; whose principles embraced truths of paramount importance, of moral arid political grandeur, the constant subversion of which by the republic, was unspeakably shameful; the constant hatred of which by the political parties of the times was simply horrible. Amid the tintinabulations of all the little political bells, the ear of the nation was distracted from the deep and awful rumbling of the coming earthquake. Men went on mobbing abolitionists quite as of course, and all was peace. Mr. Greeley s singular devotion to the policy of Protection and to Henry Clay particularly, closed his eyes against the issue upon which the life of the nation hung. Even the Com promise Measures of 1850 did not wholly undeceive him. He 292 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. failed to see even then that all that there was of permanent importance in those measures, the Fugitive Slave Law, was an unconditional surrender of the republic to the Slave Power. And at so late a period in his life as that in which he wrote The American Conflict," he is evidently reluctant in con necting Mr. Clay s reputation with a corrupt monstrosity in legislation and morals which even the great name of his favourite statesman should not be permitted to shield from lasting opprobrium. 1 It may well be inferred that if Mr. Greeley would speak of one of Mr. Clay s measures as deserving of lasting oppro brium, and this after yearn of reflection, he did not at the time speak in honeyed phrase of it. The whole country was agitated, indeed, upon the subject of slavery, and the people of the North, after the passage of the Compromise Measures, gradually cut loose from former political ideas and began to place themselves in readiness for a revolution. One of the most potent influences in the creation of a thorough anti-slavery sentiment among the people was a work 1 See The American Conflict, Vol. 1, Chap. XV. " It was entirely proper," he here says, "that Congress should provide at once for the temporary gov ernment of all the territories newly acquired from Mexico; and there was no radical objection to doing this in one bill, if that should seem advisable. As the establishment of a definite boundary between New Mexico and Texas was essential to the tranquillity and security of tht Territory, that object might fairly be contemplated in the act providing a civil government therefor. But why Texas should be paid ten millions of dollars for relinquishing her pretensions to territory never possessed by nor belonging to her, territory which had been first acquired from Mexico by the forces and then bought of her by the money of the Union is not obvious; and why this payment, if made at all, should be a make weight in a bargain covering a variety of arrangements with which it had no proper connection, is still less explicable. And when, on the back of this was piled an act to provide new facilities for slave-catching in the Free States, ostensibly balanced by another which required the slave- traders of Washington to remove their jails and auction-rooms across the Potomac to that dull old dwarf of a city which had recently been retro- ceded to Virginia, as if on purpose to facilitate this arrangement, the net product was a corrupt monstrosity in legislation and morals which even the great name of Henry Clay should not shield from lasting oppro brium." \ "UNCLE TOM S CABIN." 293 of America s most illustrious female writer. I can only refer to Mrs. Harriet Beeclier Stowe s novel of " Uncle Tom s Cabin." This was first published as a serial in The National Era news paper, a weekly journal of the National Capital, edited with great ability and sublime courage by Dr. Gamaliel Bailey. The story ran through considerable portions of the years 1851 and 1852, and attracted wide interest from the beginning. Upon publication in book form it had a vast popularity. The sensation it created has never been approached by an American literary work. So eager were persons to get the thrilling story of u Uncle Tom," that one copy of the book served the purpose of many copies, by being read aloud to parties congregated for the purpose, the demand for the novel being, during many weeks, perhaps months, immensely greater than the supply. This most masterly plea for humanity which genius has pro duced was unable to lift the nation at once out of the slough of trifling and wrong into which it had been cast by political parties, but it created an anti-slavery sentiment so intense and Avidely spread, that further encroachments of the Slave Power were thereafter impossible except by means of armed revolu tion. To the genius of Mrs. Stowe more than to any other one cause, the origin of .the Republican party may be assigned. And by this time, the influence of the public press, as the educator of the masses of the body politic had become palpa bly manifest. Undoubtedly the means of popular education supplied to most of the children of the republic at the lightest possible cost, to the poor especially, had done incalculable service in behalf of general intelligence. But it is certainly x true that the fact of the adult population, in a few years after the remarkable development of the press consequent fipon the invention of the electric telegraph and the wonderful journal istic enterprise which followed, rapidly reaching a high plane of intelligence and manly independence of thought, it is undoubtedly true, that this magnificent fact is largely due to the influence of the public press. As the people became more intelligent, more independent in opinion, the power of party, of course, correspondingly diminished. When the press took position above party it became at once more influential 294 LITE OF HORACE GREELEY. with the people and more truly representative of them. And as amongst an intelligent people there is always more of wis dom and statesmanship than amongst all the politicians, and as they now had representative journals, it did not take them long to perceive that old parties had become obsolete; boy- clothes into which it would have been impossible for the now puissant nation to place itself without making of itself a ridic ulous spectacle. ]STor will there be any to deny this claim of magnificent power on the part of the press, when they once seriously reflect upon the nature of its operations; its simple yet majestic means of influence. All will readily agree that if a skilful orator were to address large audiences of willing hearers every day, he would acquire vast influence. A great journal speaks to more persons every day of the week, every day of the year, than could be heard by any orator though he had the voice of Jupiter Tonans. And this not upon a single topic but upon a variety of topics, many of which must of necessity be of great value and interest to all the people. Libri cibus animo. News papers have become the daily intellectual food of all the citizens of enlightened Christendom. The orator, except by the aid of the press, can only influence those who stand round about him. The journalist has a greater immediate audience, but his words reach afar off, as weighty in the uttermost parts of the land or of the earth, as in the deep basement where they issue from that marvel of modern machinery, the Hoe Press. This orator, with this vast audience, is of a generous nature, and comes to you instead of requiring you to come to him. Thus with the rising and the setting of the" sun he visits the hearthstone of every intelligent family a welcome visitor. When we con sider, therefore, the great and varied contents of most of our public journals, and the marvellous means of their diffusion among the people, we cannot help agreeing that the newspaper press is, and must of necessity be, among the greatest of edu cators. Horace Greeley, though he finally yielded support to the Whig candidates in the presidential campaign of 1848, did much efficient service against party thraldom. He performed "THE NEW DEPARTURE." 295 similar service in 1852, though again supporting the regular nominations. But as we have seen he spat upon the platform and upheld one of his own. He was leading the people on the new departure;" a departure which eventually led to the formation of the political organization which controlled the affairs of the nation through the most momentous era of its history, conferring vast and lasting benefits upon the republic, but at length undertaking to be scarcely less arbitrary in its trammels than the parties which it had displaced, received, as he deemed was just, his hearty and eminent opposition. But between the time when the Whig party was dissolved and that when the Republican party was organized, grave questions arose, the agitation of which did much to dismember the Democracy, and prepare the way for a new and better era. Of this formative period of the new era, and the part taken therein by Mr. Greeley, and in the early history of the Republi can party, I shall speak in the next chapter. GHAPTEK XVIII. 1854 TO 1860. Mr. Greeley in the Political Contests of the Time The Renewal of Slavery Agitation The Kansas-Nebraska Struggle Messrs. Sumner, Chase, Wade, Seward, Fessenden The Know-Nothing Party Mr. Greeley opposes it "The Banks Congress" Mr. Greeley Assaulted General Banks Organization of the Republican Party The Fr6- mont-Buchanan Campaign Defeat of the Republicans The Kansas War "Lecompton" Senator Douglas Defends Popular Sovereignty Senator David C. Broderick, of California Edward D. Baker The Lincoln-Douglas Debates The Tribune on the Side of Douglas Mr Greeley Travels Overland to California Extracts from His Letters Buffaloes, Prairie-Dogs, and Indians Life at Denver in 1859 Brig- ham Young and Mormonism Honours in California Receptions and Addresses The Yosemite The Pacific Railroad Return John Brown. AFTER the dismemberment of the Whig party came chaos. The dissolving elements at first settled nowhere. The organ ization was for a time maintained, but it had become fossilized and all attempts to ressurect it and breathe therein a living soul were vain. Its mourners went about the streets under taking reconstruction; but the silver gray cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken. The day of small things had not been despised, but it had passed away forever. Mr. Greeley looked on all attempts to revive the Whig party with philo sophical indifference, and upon most of the self-constituted architects who proposed to rebuild, using the old materials, with good-natured contempt. It was not long until Mr. B. Gratz Brown, if my memory is not at fault, very correctly described "an old-line Whig" as "a very respectable gentle man who took his juleps and voted the Democratic ticket regularly." During this chaotic period of parties, the Temperance reform was forced upon the people as a political question. The State of Maine led off with what was called a Prohibitory Liquor "SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY." ^y7 Law, an enactment utterly prohibiting the sale of intoxica ting liquors as a beverage. This policy \va adopted in other portions of the country, and "the Maine law" was enacted bv a number of States. To this policy Mr. Greelev grave earnest JT v / O adhesion, and continued to believe in its wisdom and efficiency. In some portions of the country men opposed to the party in power attempted to unite under the name of " Union men;" in other sections the name of "People s Party," was adopted; in others still, that of " the Fusion Party." After a while, too. men called themselves "anti-Nebraska Whigs," others, "anti- Nebraska Democrats." But for some time there appeared no common bond of union, and to the casual observer the Demo cratic party had gained an indefinite lease of power. If one had observed closely, he would have perceived a certain coming danger to that organization. "Uncle Torn" had created hundreds of thousands of friends of the slave; as many earnest enemies of the system of slavery. The people declined to accept the Compromise measure as a finality. They insisted upon their right to discuss the slavery question; and they did discuss it till the agitation was about to become universal, and an anti-slavery party at once formed, when events occurred which postponed for a short period the organization of such a party. These were the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in Congress by Senator Douglas, and the rapid spread of " Know- nothingism " about the same time, and, to a great extent, in consequence thereof. The Kansas-Nebraska bill dismembered the Democratic party. Its objectionable provision was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1819-20. In lieu of that measure, which forbade slavery in all the territories of the United States north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the bill provided that the question of slavery be decided by the people of the territories themselves. Ex-Senator Benton, of Missouri, declared with coarse vigour that in making this provision, Mr. Douglas had but "injected a stump speech into the belley of the bill." What the author of the measure called the principle of popular sovereignty was in ridicule called " squatter sovereignty " by those who opposed it. They charged that it was a "reopening 298 r-TFE or HOE ACT: GKEELEY. of the slavery question; that it was a deliberate attempt oT the Slave Power, to desecrate to slavery an immense domain which by the solemn faith of the nation had been consecrated to freedom. The bill was instantly attacked in the Senate and by the public journals of widest influence, whether of one party or another, and the people soon became greatly agitated. The North was fairly aroused to wrath against the bill, in every part of which indignation meetings were held. Democrats as well as others taking part in the proceedings. Eminent statesmen in the Senate took every advantage of the popular excitement, and gave powerful impulse to the rapidly-growing anti-slavery sentiment of the country. Charles Stunner, of Massachusetts, was at this time a comparatively new member of the Senate. He has since done more than any of his cotem- poraries to increase the renown of American statesmanship, give dignity, power, beneficence to eloquence, and to make all men bow with willing and respectful deference before great genius and vast learning; but, perhaps, he never more ably and earnestly served his countrymen than during the long, tierce contest over the Nebraska bill. The State of Ohio was then represented in the Senate by Salmon P. Chase and Benja min F. Wade. The former afterwards became Secretary of the Treasury, and then Chief Justice of the United States. To conduct the financial affairs of the republic during the period Mr. Chase was Secretary was a task of incomparable difficulty; but Mr. Chase performed it with incomparable success. Yet it may be said that even this grand achievement of adminis trative ability was not greater than the forensic talents he displayed in the Senate during the Nebraska struggle. His colleague, "Bluff Ben. AVade," or " Old Ben. Wade," as he was familiarly called by people and press, rushed into the conflict with his accustomed abandon, and dashingly drove the enemy into confusion. Senator Seward s sublime serenity and sublime courage, his chivalric bearing, and his tremendous strength of statement were never more superbly manifested. He undoubt edly saw the present defeat and the future victory of freedom with equal clearness. Senator Fessenden, of Maine, who alone THE KNOW -NOTHING PARTY. could cope with Mr. Douglas in readiness and strength of argument in a running debate, and who surpassed the great Illinoisan in culture and in the use of wit and humour, gave zest, liveliness, piquancy to a discussion to which the whole country listened with eager interest. The press gave to the exciting question fullness and inde pendence of treatment which, perhaps, no question of politics had previously received. All the Northern States which had general elections in 1854, voted anti-Nebraska. Illinois received Mr. Douglas, when he went home to spend the recess, with indignation. And though it is due to him to say that he was not at all alarmed, he keenly felt the loss which he had himself given to his great popularity. Mr. Greeley at this time thought that Mr. Douglas was simply bidding for the Presidency. The Tribune assailed him with great energy of expression, and did more, no doubt, to give him the temporary odium which attached to his name than all his other assailants. Now was the time for the formation of an anti-slavery party. It happened, however, in the chaotic state of affairs, that a prescriptive organization sprang up and rapidly over ran the country. This was the Know-Nothing party. Based upon religious and political bigotry, it had nothing whatever to commend it to the approval of liberal and intelligent minds. Its doctrines were, simply, hatred of Roman Catholics and hatred of men not born in America. A political creed so nar row could, under ordinary circumstances, have had only few adherents. But the party was a secret society. It had solemn oaths to administer to its members, pass-words, grips, etc. As a political organization it was fairly entitled to unmixed con demnation, except in one respect. Its discipline was excellent. And there was no political discipline extant in the country except in the Democratic party and in this. Yast numbers of men, therefore, for the simple purpose of organization, went into the Know-Nothing party because they had no other party, with organization, into which they could go, save only the Democratic, which they detested. One cannot record the fact without blushing for his country, but it is probably true 300 JLIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. that a pluralty, ma} 7 be a majority, of American voters joined this Know-Nothing party in 1854 and 1855. Mr. Greeley fought its narrow doctrines and its secret organ ization from the beginning. He disliked Democracy, as repre sented by the political party of that name, much, but he disliked political bigotry and religious intolerance more. In his general views at this time, both Mr. Seward and Mr. Weed undoubtedly sympathized, but Mr. Weed was willing to do more to defeat the Democracy, simply for what he esteemed the good of defeating that party, than Mr. Greeley. Hence arose suspicion and distrust in Mr. Greeley s mind, which culminated in the noted letter dissolving the firm of " Seward, Weed & Greeley," of which we shall have occasion to speak more at length by and by. The elections for Representatives in Congress in the year 1854 were disastrous to the Democratic party, but did not result in the selection of a majority of members belonging to any one party. The consequence was the famous contest in the House which continued some two months, and finally resulted in the election of Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachu setts, as Speaker, through the operation of the plurality rule. Mr. Greeley, having returned from Europe, proceeded to Washington some time before the meeting of Congress, and by telegraph and letter posted The Tribune daily with intelli- gence from the scene of general interest. This struggle for the organization of the House, so long, bitter, arid exciting, was participated in throughout by Mr. Greeley, who constantly advised with members. He was willing that the free-soil members should support an -anti-Nebraska American"; but the " Americans " from the South refused to sustain any one of " Republican " principles, the free-soilers now beginning to be known as Republicans, and, quite generally, with the prefix "Black." Wherefore, Mr. Greeley determined that he for one would fight it out on the Republican line. "Stick to Banks " became his motto, because Mr. Banks represented the Repub lican idea, and from this judgment he never for a moment swerved. The caucus candidate of the Democrats was Mr. William A. THE THIRTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 301 Richardson, of Illinois, a devoted friend of Judge Douglas, a shrewd politician, a popular stump-orator, and the only gentle man of the House, perhaps, who could chew tobacco like a saw-mill. The opposing parties made no caucus nominations. The Southern "-Americans" supported Humphrey Marshall, of Kentucky, but Henry M. Fuller, of Pennsylvania, received a number of votes from this source. Mr. Banks received a larger number of votes than any ot Mr. Richardson s competitors, on the first ballot, except Mr. Marshall and Mr. L. D. Campbell, of Ohio. Mr. Campbell was at this time in the prime of man hood, and had probably been defeated for Congress more frequently than any of his co-members. Small in stature, he was known in Ohio as " the Butler Pony." A strong speaker, long a Whig of decidedly free-soil proclivities, he had passed into the "American" party in the general pressure in that direction. That he was an able debater is shown by the fact that he often met the celebrated Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, and beat him in argument. Mr. Campbell was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1870 beating Robert C. Schenck but by this time age and ill health had under mined his energies, and he manifested in the House none of his old fire and power. His highest vote for Speaker of the XXXIVth Congress known as " the Banks Congress" was 81 votes. At length he refused to permit the use of his name, from which time Mr. Banks steadily increased in strength, until his election on the 133d ballot, he receiving 103 votes; William Aiken, of South Carolina, 100; Mr. Fuller, 6; all others 5. The National Capital has not often been in a higher state of excitement than it was throughout this long contest. And the country fully sympathised with the political metropolis. Horace Greeley was thoroughly aroused. He thundered in The Tribune as he seldom thundered before or afterwards. He was thus " terribly in earnest " because he believed the election of Mi. Banks would greatly aid in the successful organization of the Republican party, and the speedy extinguishment of Know-Nothingism. All sorts of stratagems, disreputable and otherwise, were 302 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. resorted to with the object of defeating Mr. Banks. Mr. Albert Rust, of Arkansas, on the 21st of January, 1856, offered a long preamble and resolution the upshot of which was that Mr. Banks must be withdrawn as a candidate! Other candidates were named, of course, but Mr. Banks was the man Mr. Rust s party proposed to drive off the track. Mr. Greeley spoke of this shameful manoeuvre in as energetic Anglo-Saxon as he knew how to use, and he was long distinguished in that regard. There was nothing coarse in his criticism upon Rust s resolution. Its truthfulness and keenness cut that member very deeply, however, and he responded in the then fashion able Southern manner, namely, with fist and bludgeon, pistols and knives in reserve. Mr. Greeley gave a full account of the affair in The Tribune of January 26th: " I have heard since I came here a good deal of the personal violence to which I was exposed, but only one man has offered to attack me until to day, and he was so drunk that he made a poor fist of it. In fact, I do not remember that any man ever seriously attacked me till now. " I was conversing with two gentlemen on my way down from the Capitol, after the adjournment of the House this afternoon, when a stranger requested a word with me. I stopped, and my friends went on. The stranger, who appeared in the prime of life, six feet high, and who must weigh over two hundred, thus begun : " Is your name Greeley ? " Yes. " Are you a non-combatant ? " That is according to circumstances. " The words were hardly out of my mouth when he struck me a stun ning blow on the right side of my head, and followed it by two or three more, as rapidly as possible. My hands were still in my great-coat pockets, for I had no idea that he was about to strike. He staggered me against the fence of the walk from the Capitol to the Avenue, but did not get me down. I rallied as soon as possible, and saw him standing several feet from me, with several -persons standing or rushing in between us. I asked, Who is this man ! I don t know him, and understood him to answer, with an imprecation, You 11 know me soon enough, or You 11 know me hereafter, when he turned and went down toward the street. No one answered my inquiry directly, but some friends soon came up, who told me that my assailant was Albert Rust, M. C. from Arkansas. He gave no hint of any cause or pretext he may have had for this assault, but I must infer that it is to be found in my strictures in Monday s Tribune (letter of Thursday evening last) on his attempt to drive Mr. Banks out of the field as a candidate for Speaker, by passing a resolution inviting all N. P. BANKS. 303 the present candidates to withdraw. I thought that a mean trick, and said so most decidedly; I certainly think no better of it, now that I have made the acquaintance of its author. " The bully turned and walked down alone ; I followed, conversing with two friends. Crossing Four-and-a-half street, they dropped behind to speak to acquaintances, and I, walking along toward the National Hotel, soon found myself in the midst of a huddle of strangers. One of these turned short upon me I saw it was my former assailant and said, Do you know me now ? I answered, Yes ; you are Rust of Arkansas. He said something of what he would do if I were a combatant, and I replied that I claimed no exemption on that account. He now drew a heavy cane, which I had not seen before, and struck a pretty heavy blow at my head, which I caught on my left arm, with no other damage than a rather severe bruise. He was trying to strike again, and I was endeavouring to close with him, when several persons rushed between and separated us. I did not strike him at all, nor lay a finger on him; but it certainly would have been a pleasure to me, had I been able to perform the public duty of knocking him down. I cannot mistake the movement of his hand on the Avenue, and am sure it must have been toward a pistol in his belt. And the crowd which surrounded us was nearly all Southern, as he doubtless knew before he renewed his attack on me. * * * " I presume this is not the last outrage to which I am to be subjected. I came here with a clear understanding that it was about an even chance whether I should or should not be allowed to go home alive ; for my busi ness here is to unmask hypocrisy, defeat treachery, and rebuke meanness, and these are not dainty employments even in smoother times than ours. But I shall stay here just so long as I think proper, using great plainness of speech, but endeavouring to treat all men justly and faithfully. I may often judge harshly, and even be mistaken as to facts, but I shall always be ready to correct my mistakes and to amend my judgments. I shall carry no weapons and engage in no brawls; but if ruffians waylay and assail me, I shall certainly not run, and, so far as able, I shall defend myself." Mr. Greeley declined to prosecute Rust for the assault. The respectable press of the country expressed disapprobation of Rust s ruffianism, one journal saying that " the fellow who would strike Horace Greeley would strike his mother." Writing of this long contest for the organization of the House years afterwards, in his Recollections of a Busy Life, Mr. Greeley speaks of the successful man as follows: Mr. Banks, though then in his second term, proved an excellent Speaker, prompt, vigorous, decided, and just. Though a majority remained politically hostile to him, and the waves of party passion ran very high, I believe but one of the many decisions made by him as Speaker 304 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. was overruled; and the House, on calmer consideration, reconsidered its overruling vote. Abler men may have filled that difficult post; but no man, I judge, ever gave himself more unreservedly to the discharge of its arduous duties. I have heard that Mr. Banks was a schoolmaster in his youth, and his manner in the chair often countenanced the tradition. If he had a fault, it was that of overdoing, impelled by absorbing anxiety to keep in order a body essentially turbulent, and inclined to resent and baffle any attempt to draw the reins too tightly. The temptations to an opposite course are very strong, and presiding officers far oftener err on the side of laxity than on that of rigour. Though Mr. Banks was never surpassed, perhaps, as presiding officer of the House, the praise is of no great value. The quali ties of an auctioneer rather than others are there most called into exercise. In after years he became the most influential man on the floor, and the only member of the XLIId Con gress 1871- 73 who always received universal attention the moment he pronounced u Mr. Speaker." Of that Congress he was by far the greatest orator, and was second to none in gen eral influence. His retirement at its close may justly be regarded as a public calamity. As Mr. G-reeley had foreseen, the blunder of Know-Nothing- ism postponed the organization of a political party with an anti-slavery creed. It was impossible, however, long to pre vent the people from finding the position in which they of right should be placed. Whether previously of one party or another, they had gravitated toward anti-slavery since the Compromise of 1850. Mrs. Stowe s popular novel greatly increased the movement. The Kansas-Nebraska bill, manifest ing a design to extend the domain of the slave power, added new impetus. The Know-nothing party checked the move ment, but it was impossible to stay its progress. It cannot be justly claimed that statesmen or journalists had most to do with the formation of the Republican party. It was the spontaneous movement of the people against a threatened danger. Statesmen and journalists who had been eminent in the Democratic party and those who had been eminent in the Whig party sympathized alike with the political revolution. Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, though a Whig, became no more sincere Republican than Mr. Hamlin, a Democrat. Mr. Seward, THE KEl UBLICAN PARTY. 305 a Whig, was no more earnest in the new party than Mr. Pres ton King, a Democrat, a man, let it be said in passing, of solid understanding, like his physical structure, and of dis positions so amiable that his personal influence in the Senate and the government has rarely been equalled. Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, was not earlier to adopt the faith of Repub licanism, than Oliver P. Morton. In Illinois, Trumbull and Lincoln clasped hands, and Ray and Wentworth and Judd and many others who had been influential Democrats bade " the Little Giant " a long farewell. Mr. Greeley and Mr. Bryant never could forget the fierce conflicts of the past, but against the common danger they stood shoulder to shoulder for years, and though ever in debate upon minor issues, made common warfare against the aggressive enemy of the republic. Of such elements, hitherto discordant, was the Republican party formed. It had one idea. This was enough; and pre cisely one more than any other party had. That idea was The Restriction of Slavery. By it were embraced National Faith, Political Morality, Progress, Reform. It was, therefore, both a broad and an elevated creed. In its logical development it was sure to become Abolition of Slavery, and national salva tion. The people saw this very clearly. Few public men saw it more clearly than Horace Greeley. Nowhere else were the wrongs of slavery more abundantly, clearly, and constantly shown than in The Tribune. Upon such topics Mr. Greeley wrote what would make many volumes, if printed in books. And it was upon such themes that Mr. Congdon, an associate editor, wrote a series of articles continuing through several years, which were the best exhibitions of humourous satire yet shown by an American writer, writing in the English lan guage. The tirst general campaign into which the people led the leaders of the Republican party resulted in a defeat. This was in the year 1856. The first national convention of the year was that of the " American " party, being the debris of the Know-Nothing organization, which had passed into a state of ruin. Millard Fillrnore was nominated for President, and Andrew J. Donelson, of Tennessee, for Yice-President. This 20 306 LIFE f 7 HORACE OEEELEY. ticket was aften 1 " <^s (September) endorsed by an assemblage of amiable ^-ntlemen who called themselves a Whig National Convention, over which Mr. Edward Bates, of Missouri, pre sided. Having endorsed the "American" ticket, and called up the ghosts of dead patriots to shake their gory locks at " sectional " parties, the amiable gentlemen departed about their business, and as Yvliigs appeared again nevermore. But before this the Democratic convention had assembled at Cincinnati, and nominated James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for President and Yice-President respectively. The competitors of Mr. Buchanan were Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, President Pierce, and General Cass. The contest was very animated, but resulted in the choice of the least worthy of the candidates, and the ill disguised wrath of many of the best men of the party. It was known to them that Mr. Douglas would at least give fair play to freedom in the territories, and that Mr. Buchanan would not. The candid will agree that the juggling platform gave him who was elected much excuse for his betrayal of free Kansas after he became President, a betrayal which might have succeeded at once in producing untold ills but for the brave and patriotic course of benator Douglas. The Republicans met in their first national convention at the city of Philadelphia on the 17th of June. Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, presided. Upon taking the chair, he delivered a speech of stirring eloquence, which fairly electrified the vast audience, and succeeded in giving that gentleman high reputa tion as an orator throughout the country. Many of the delegates were favourable to the nomination of Judge McLean, of Ohio. He had for many years been a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, where he had shown great dignity, learning, and ability. Others preferred a younger man, and among these was Mr. Greeley. These united upon Colonel John C. Fremont, of California, whose adventurous, dashing career had given him great popularity. Mr. Greeley correctly thought Fremont would be especially strong with young men, who formed a very large proportion of the new party. These views prevailed, and Fremont was chosen on the first ballo:. THE FREMONT CAMPAIGN. 307 Associated with him as candidate for Vice-President was William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, whose strongest compet itor for this position was Abraham Lincoln, ol Illinois, then but very little known except in the West. The campaign was one of excited interest throughout, but resulted in the election of Buchanan and Breckinridge by a large majority of electoral votes and a considerable plurality of the popular vote. Nevertheless, the Republican candidates had an immense majority in the Free States, and an aggregate pop ular strength of 1,341,514 votes. Mr. Greeley threw his whole soul into this campaign. Other matters were treated in the platform but the issue joined was that of Slavery. Civil war was practically raging in the Ter ritory of Kansas. The aggressions of the Slave Power were there so unmistakably and wickedly shown that no man could deny the fact. Citizens of the border counties of Missouri invaded the Territory in behalf of Slavery. In the vigorous language of the times they were called " Border Ruffians." Associations were formed in the Free States with the object of colonizing the Territory in the interest of Freedom. These, by the advice of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher himself, and others of scarcely less pacific principles in general, were hand-, somely supplied with Sharpe s rifles. The war in bleeding Kansas went bravely on, supplying the friends of justice with many unanswerable arguments and irresistible appeals. The Tribune, which ever fought a magnificent fight when it had once entered upon an active canvass, never more gallantly engaged the enemy than during the Fremont-Buchanan cam paign. During most of the canvass it had a powerful ally in The Herald, whose editor and Mr. Greeley laid aside their long personal discussions, and met in friendly recognition. 1 The final defeat was not unexpected by Mr. Greeley; and, though he greatly lamented it, he thought he saw in the result auguries 1 Henry S. Lane said in some of his speeches during this campaign something like this: "You all know, iny countrymen, there are three things that a candidate for President must have, in order to be elected ; and Fremont has them all the women (God bless them !), the young men, and the New- York Herald !" 308 LIFE OF HORACE GRKELEY. of coming triumph. "Americanism" certainly had received mortal wounds; many of the States were strongly Republican; the Senate of the United States was certain to become anti- slavery. But even if Mr. Greeley had not seen cause of much gratu- lation in the positive strength of the Republicans, he had grounds of hope in the dissensions, sure to come, of the Dem ocratic party. It was certain that either the South or the North had been deceived by the Cincinnati platform. In the North, " popular sovereignty " was part of Democracy, pro claimed by every orator. In the South, popular sovereignty was derided. Whether President Buchanan should take one position or the other a dismemberment of the Democracy was inevitable. Thus the first notable result of the Kansas- Nebraska bill was the formation of a powerful anti-slavery party. The next notable result of that measure was the dis memberment of the Democratic party, whereby the Republicans were in due time able to achieve a great, momentous victory. The first instance of rupture grew out of the attempt to fasten slavery upon the people of Kansas through a fraudulent State Constitution, called the Lecompton Constitution, from the place where it was concocted. This pretended fundamental law was passed by a body of men elected by means which would have rendered the whole aifair the most laughable and grotesque of burlesques but for its wicked purpose. Ballot- boxes were stuffed with ballots voted by the batch in the names of persons recorded on obsolete directories of eastern cities. "Lecompton" might possibly have been the will of some of the citizens, dead and alive, of the city of Cincinnati ; by no possibility could it have been pronounced the will of the people of Kansas. Nevertheless, in the interests of the Slave Power, President Buchanan sustained it. In view of the popular feeling against it, he at first demurred, and, as stated by Mr. Greeley, it was currently reported that his less scrupu lous Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, of Georgia, being asked by a visitor what was the matter, carelessly replied, "O, not much; only Old Buck is opposing the administration." But he speedily gave in his adhesion. SENATOR BRODERICK. 309 Senator Douglas openly declared in favour of popular sover eignty. He opposed "Lecorapton" in the Senate with that persistent pluck for which he was more remarkable than any other of his cotemporary statesmen. He was removed from the position he had long held, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, and his influence with the administration was destroyed. Nevertheless he kept up the fight with most admirable gallantry and with increasing earnestness, richly earning the approbation of his countrymen and receiving the hearty plaudits of the Kepublicans. Among eminent men of the Democratic party who sustained Mr. Douglas, was Senator David C. Broderick, of California. Mr. Broderick had risen from an humble position in life. He spent his youth and early manhood in the city of New-York, where his natural talents and courageous spirit gave him large influence. Removing to California not long after the war with Mexico, he became a prominent politician in the new State, and rapidly grew in intellectual and moral stature. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1856, and there his com manding presence, chivalric bearing, and brilliant parts as a debater at once gave him prominence and influence. Unless it were by the ruffianly assault upon Senator Sumner, in 1856, by a Representative from South Carolina, the utter barbarism of the Slave Power was not more conspicuously illustrated than in the case of the accomplished and generous Broderick. The Slave Power doomed him to destruction, and he fell in a duel in September, 1859, slain by the Chief Justice of the State which this victim of a horrible custom had done so much to honour. The death of Mr. Broderick gave occasion to one of the noblest exhibitions of American eloquence, in the appreci ative, majestic, and profoundly pathetic funeral oration by Edward D. Baker, afterwards United States Senator, a Brigadier- General of the Union army, who met his death in battle, gal lantly contending against the same power at whose command Broderick himself had fallen. No Republican looked upon the contest waged against "Lecompton" by Senator Douglas and his sympathizers in the Democratic party with more unmingled satisfaction than 310 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Horace Greeley. Former severe criticisms, just though they were supposed to be, were forgotten; mere partizan ties were entirely unloosed; and the Great Editor came out in fervent approval of the Great Debater. The journalist afterwards expressed his deliberate judgment of the statesman in these words : "Mr. Douglas was the readiest man I ever knew. He was not a hard student; if he had been, it would have been difficult to set limits to his power. I have seen him rise in the Senate quite at fault with regard to essential facts in controversy, and thence make damaging blunders in debate ; but he readily caught at and profited by any suggestion thrown out by friend or foe; and no American ever excelled him in off-hand dis cussion : so that, even if worsted in the first stages, he was apt to regain his lost ground as he went on. Once, as I sat with the senior Francis P. Blair and one or two others outside the bar of the Senate in 1856, he made us the text of an amusing dissertation on the piebald, ring-streaked, and speckled materials whereof the new Republican party was composed; and, passing us soon afterward, he hailed me familiarly with the interro gation, Didn t I give you a good turn just now? At a later day, when the Lecompton struggle was in progress, a mutual friend, remembering that my strictures on Mr. Douglas in former years had been of a very caustic sort, inquired of him whether he had any objections, on account of those strictures, to meeting me on a friendly footing. Certainly not, was his instant response ; I always pay that class of debts as I go along. Our country has often been called to mourn severe, untimely losses ; yet I deem the death of Stephen A. Douglas, just at the outbreak of our great Civil War, and when he had thrown his whole soul into the cause of the country, one of the most grievous and irreparable." 2 The Republicans of the State of Illinois, though cordially approving the course of Senator Douglas, most emphatically non-concurred in the suggestion that he should be returned to the Senate, a suggestion which Mr. Greeley deemed sensible and wise at the time, and never changed his opinion in that regard. So much opposed, indeed, were the Illinois Repub licans to continuing Mr. Douglas in the Senate, that they made a contest against him unusual in form, unparalleled in earnest ness, and unapproached in the forensic ability and universal interest which it produced by any similar contest in the history of American politics. The Republican convention of the year 1858, convened at * Recollections of a Busy Life, pp. 358-59. UNOOLN AND DOUGLAS. 311 Springfield for the purpose of nominating candidates for the various State oifices to be filled at the November election, not only did this, but nominated Abraham Lincoln as the candi date of the Republicans for United States Senator. Upon this occasion Mr. Lincoln delivered a masterly, memorable speech, which was never answered, though very many times replied to, beginning with the forcible illustration from Holy Writ, that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Afterwards, he and Mr. Douglas met in joint discussion at a number of cities and towns in different parts of the State, and were list ened to with lively interest by hundreds of thousands of citi zens in the aggregate. The debates were fully reported and published the morning following each debate in The Chicago Tribune and The Times of that city, the latter of which was edited at this time, if my memory does not err, by Mr. James TV. Sheahan, one of America s ablest journalists, and the biog rapher of Mr. Douglas. The Associated Press published lengthy reports of the discussions; several metropolitan jour nals had special reporters. Thus the people of the whole country were kept fully informed of all the sagacious strata gems, the masterly manoeuvres, the general engagements of this intellectual war of the Illinois giants. The eyes of the nation looked toward Illinois; the ear of the body politic was turned in that direction, intently listening. The State itself was aglow with excitement, the like of which was never seen even in the most animated Presidential campaign. Popular sovereignly could not have been more forcibly expounded than it was by Mr. Douglas; Republicanism was never more eloquently, wisely, logically, placed before the public mind than in the speeches of Mr. Lincoln, who now and here attained a reputation for thoughtfulness and statesmanship which after events amply demonstrated that he deserved. It would be difficult to say which of the great disputants exhibited the greater intellectual power. If Mr. Lincoln were superior in comprehensiveness of view and statement; if his patriotism appeared to be of a nobler type, embracing the good of all men in its beneficent purpose; yet was Mr. Douglas the quicker in reply and the more ready to demolish an unexpected argu- 312 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. ment. If Mr. Lincoln were the more versatile and captivating in illustration, perhaps Mr. Douglas was closer in his reason ings. But it must he admitted that Mr. Lincoln s imperturbable good-nature contrasted pleasantly against the occasional out bursts of ill temper on the part of Mr. Douglas. Singularly enough, the result was a victory to either; for though Mr. Douglas had a majority of the members of the Legislature, and was returned to the Senate, a majority of the people were represented by the friends of Mr. Lincoln. No one was more profoundly impressed with the ability shown by Mr. Lincoln during this remarkable canvass than Horace Greeley. He completely sympathized with the Repub licans of Illinois in their love and admiration of their chosen leader, but doubted the political wisdom of their course. He says it was long before they forgave him for this difference of judgment. In truth, the Republicans of Mr. Lincoln s State judged the somewhat persistent interference of The New- York Tribune in the management of their own domestic politics in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, as a trifle impertinent. It is due to Mr. Greeley s position to say that, upon the whole, he preserved his temper much better than they did. Political events which speedily followed erased all recollection of the unpleasantness. In the summer of 1859, Mr. Greeley made a journey over land from New- York to the Pacific coast. A railway to the Pacific had been early advocated by him as a national necessity alike in its political and its commercial aspects. While others, he says, ; were scoffingly likening it to a tunnel under the Atlantic or a bridge to the m-oon, 1 was pondering the proba bilities and means of its early construction. I resolved to make a journey of observation across the continent, with reference to the natural obstacles presented to. and facilities afforded for, its construction." He left home on the 9th of May, and reached New-York on his return near the close of September, a period of his busy life of notable interest, and of great usefulness to his country then and afterwards. Proceeding by way of Cleveland. Chicago, Quincy, Illinois, and St. Joseph, Missouri, by rail, he went thence by steamer GOOD-NIGHT TO CIVTLIZ.VnON. 31 to Atchisou, Kansas. He made quite a tour of the Territory and delivered therein a number of volitical addresses. He observed in one of his letters that " the twin curses of Kansas, now that the border-ruffians have stopped ravaging her, are land-speculation and one-horse politicians." He also remarked that it took three log houses to make a city in Kansas, but thev beirin calling it a city so soon as they have staked out . o / / lots. But he liked the Territory better than he had expected to, and his descriptions of the country, the cities and towns, were in the main highly favourable. But he could not for get the " land-sharks " and one-horse politicians aforesaid. " Adieu," he said at Manhattan, "to friendly greetings and speakings! Adieu for a time to pen and paper! Adieu to bed-rooms and wash-bowls! Adieu (let me hope) to cold rains and flooded rivers! Hurrah for Pike s Peak!" In his next letter, dated at " Station 0, Pike s Peak Express Co., Pipe Creek, May 28, 1859," he gives the progress he had recently made toward primitive simplicity as follows: " I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to its- lowest round. If the Cheyennes thirty of whom stopped the last ex press down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal from it shall see fit to capture and strip us, we shall probably have furthei experience in the same line; but for the present the progress I have made during the last fortnight toward the primitive simplicity of human exist ence may be roughly noted thus : "May 12th. CHICAGO. Chocolate and morning newspapers last seen on the breakfast-table. "23d. LEAVENWORTH. Room-bells and baths make their disappearance. "24th. TOPEKA. Beef-steak and wash-bowls (other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto. "26th. MANHATTAN. Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the blessings that brighten as they take their flight. Chairs ditto. "27th. JUNCTION CITY. Last visitation of a boot-black, with dissolv ing views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good-by. "28th. PIPE CREEK. Benches for seats at meals have disappeared, giving place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling turn) write our letters in the express-wagon that has borne us by day, and must supply us lodgings for the night. Thunder and lightning from both south and west give strong promise of a shower before morning. Dubious looks at several holes in the canvass covering of the wagon. Our trust, under Providence, is in buoyant hearts and an India-rubber blanket. Good night." 314 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELET. Here he came into the buffalo country. He was struck with amazement at the immense number of these animals. He was confident he saw a million in a single day. He pro nounced the prairie-dog the funny fellow of those parts, and admitted that he and the owl lived amicably together in the same hole, but he indignantly denied u that the rattlesnake is ever admitted as a third partner." But he speedily retracted. In his very next letter he says: " Speaking of rattlesnakes I hasten to retract the skepticism avowed in a former letter as to the usual and welcome residence of these venomous serpents in the prairie-dog s burrow. The evidence of the fact is too direct and reliable to be gainsayed. It is idle to attempt holding out against facts; so I have pondered this anomaly until I think I clearly comprehend it. The case is much like that of some newspaper establish ments, whose proprietors, it is said, find it convenient to keep on their staff a broth of a boy from Tipperary, standing six feet two in his stockings and measuring a yard or more across the shoulders, who stands ready, with an illegant brogue, a twinkle in his eye, and a hickory sapling firmly grasped in his dexter fist, to respond to all choleric, peremptory customers, who call of a morning, hot with wrath and bristling with cow hide, to demand a parley with the editor. The cayota is a gentleman of an inquiring, investigating turn, who is an adept at excavation, and whose fondness for prairie-dog is more ardent than flattering. To dig one out and digest him would be an easy task, if he were alone in his den, or with only the owl as his partner ; but when the firm is known or strongly sus pected to be Prairie-Dog, Rattlesnake, & Co., the cayota s passion for subterranean researches is materially cooled. The rattlesnake is to the concern what the fighting editor is to the journalistic organizations afore said. And thus, while my faith is enlarged, is my reason satisfied." While crossing the Desert, Mr. Greeley met with an accident from an upset whereby he received a cut on his left cheek, and " a deep gouge " in his left leg below the knee, " with a pretty smart concussion generally, but not a bone started nor a tendon strained." So oif he started on a brisk walk through a scene of utter desolation to the next station. He arrived at Denver on the morning of June 6. " A true picture of gold-seekers," he says, " setting out from home, trim and jolly, for Pike s Peak, and of those same gold-seekers, sober as judges, and slow-moving as their own weary oxen, dropping into Denver, would convey a salutary lesson to many a sanguine soul. Nay, I have in my mind s eye an individual who rolled out of DENVER IN 1859. 315 Leavenworth, barely thirteen days ago, in a satisfactory rig, and a spirit of adequate self-complacency, but who though his hardships have been nothing to theirs dropped into Den ver this morning in a sobered and thoughtful frame of mind, in dust-begrimed and tattered habiliments, with a patch on his cheek, a bandage on his leg, and a limp in his gait, altogether constituting a spectacle most rueful to behold." Mr. Greeley remained at Denver several days, and visited the "diggings" round about. At Gregory s Diggings, he made a speech to some fifteen hundred or two thousand people. He told the audience many plain truths, speaking of postal and express facilities, the Pacific railroad, the then proposed Rocky Mountain State, and did not fail to condemn the vices of gambling and intemperance. Mr. Greeley thought that the Rocky Mountains, with their grand, aromatic forests, their grassy glades, their frequent springs, and dancing streams of the brightest, sweetest water, their pure, elastic atmosphere, and their unequalled game and fish, were destined to be a favourite resort and home of civilized man. He saw a great many Indians and hence " learned to appreciate better than hitherto, and to make more allowance for, the dislike, aversion, contempt, wherewith they are usually regarded by their white neighbours, and have been since the days of the Puritans." He judged that the only practicable mode by which the In dians could be made clean, industrious, and civilized, would be by special attention to the education of the women. Denver, now a large, thriving city, with daily newspapers and nil the evidences of progress and civilization, was then a collection of huts. On the opposite bank of Cherry Creek, just before it is lost in the South Platte, was Auraria rival "city." In a letter to The Tribune, Mr. Greeley describes life in Denver in 1859: " Of these rival cities, Auraria is by far the more venerable some of its structures being, I think, fully a year old, if not more. Denver, on the other hand, can boast of no antiquity beyond September or October last. In the architecture of the two cities there is, notwithstanding, a striking similarity cotton-wood logs, cut from the adjacent bottom of the Platte, roughly hewed on the upper and under sides, and chinked with billets of split cotton-wood on the inner, and with mud on the outer side, forming 316 LIFE OF HOKACE GKEELEY. the walls of nearly or quite every edifice which adorns either city. Across the center of the interior, from shorter wall to wall, stretches a sturdy ridge-pole, usually in a state of nature, from which shooks, or split saplings of cotton-wood, their split sides down, incline gently to the trans verse or longer sides; on these (in the more finished structures) a coating of earth is laid ; and, with a chimney of mud-daubed sticks in one corner. a door nearly opposite, and a hole beside it representing or prefiguring a window, the edifice is complete. Of course, many have no earth on their covering of shooks, and so are liable to gentle inundation in the rainy season; but, though we have had thunder and lightning almost daily, with a brisk gale in most instances, there has been no rain worth naming such here for weeks, and the unch inked, barely shook-covered houses, through whose sides and roofs you may see the stars as you lie awake nights, are decidedly the cooler and airier. There is a new hotel nearly finished in Auraria, which has a second story (but no first story) floor ; beside this, mine eyes have never yet been blessed with the sight of any floor what ever in either Denver or Auraria. The last time I slept or ate with a floor under me (our wagon-box and mother earth excepted) was at Junction- City, nearly four weeks ago. The Denver House, which is the Astor House of the gold region, has walls of logs, a floor of earth, with windows and roof of rather flimsy cotton-sheeting; while every guest is allowed as good a bed as his blankets will make. The charges are no higher than at the Astor and other first-class hotels, except for liquor twenty-five, cents a drink for dubious whiskey, coloured and nicknamed to suit the taste ol customers being the regular rate throughout this region. I had the honour to be shaved there by a nephew (so he assured me) of Murat, Bonaparte s king of Naples the honour and the shave together costing but a paltry dollar. Still, a few days of such luxury surfeited me, mainly because the main or drinking-room was also occupied by several blacklegs as a gambling-hall, and their incessant clamour of Who 11 go me twenty : The ace of hearts is the winning card. Whoever turns the ace of hearts wins the twenty dollars, etc., etc., persisted in at all hours up to midnight, became at length a nuisance, from which I craved deliverance at any price. Then the visitors of that drinking and gambling-room had a care less way, when drunk, of firing revolvers, sometimes at each other, at other times quite miscellaneousljvwhich struck me as inconvenient for a quiet guest with only a leg and a half, hence in poor condition for dodg ing bullets. So I left. " How do you live in Denver ? I inquired of a New-York friend some weeks domiciled here, in whose company I visited the mines. O, I ve jumped a cabin, was his cool, matter-of-course reply. As jumping a cabin was rather beyond my experience, I inquired further, and learned that, finding an uninhabited cabin that suited him, he had quietly entered and spread his blankets, eating at home or abroad as opportunity might sug gest. I found, on further inquiry, that at least one-third of the habitations in Denver and Auraria were desolate when we came here (they have been gradually filling up since), some of the owners having gone into the BRIGHAM YOUNG. 317 mountains, digging or prospecting, and taken their limited supply of household goods along with them; while others, discouraged by the poor show of mining six weeks ago, when even the nearer mountains were still covered with snow and ice, rushed pell-mell down the Platte with the wild reflux of the spring emigration, abandoning all but what they could carry away. It is said that lots and cabins together sold for twenty -five dollars so long as there were purchasers ; but these soon failing, they were left behind like camp-fires in the morning, and have since been at the service of all comers. "So, in company with a journalizing friend, I, too, have jumped a cabin, and have kept to it quite closely, under a doctor s care, for the last week or ten days. It is about ten feet square, and eight feet high, rather too well chinked for summer, considering that it lacks a window, but must be a capital house for this country in winter. I board with the nearest neighbour ; and it is not my landlady s fault that the edible resources of Denver are decidedly limited. But even these are improving. To the bread, bacon, and beans, which formed the staple of every meal a short time age, there have been several recent additions; milk, which was last week twenty-five cents per quart, is now down to ten, and I hear a rumour that eggs, owing to a recent increase in the number of hens, within five hundred miles, from four or five to twelve or fifteen, are about to fall from a dollar a dozen to fifty cents per dozen. On every side, I note signs of progress improvement manifest destiny: there was a man about the city yesterday with lettuce to sell and I am credibly assured that there will be green peas next month actually peas ! provided it should rain soakingly meantime whereof a hazy, lowering sky would seem just now to afford some hope. (P. S. The hope has vanished.) But I already sadly behind, and nearly able to travel again must turn my back on this promise of luxuries, and take the road to Laramie to-day, or at furthest to morrow." From Denver, Mr. Greeley proceeded to Salt Lake City, by way of Laramie, the South Pass, Big Sandy, and Fort Bridger. On the afternoon of July 13, he had, by appointment, a long interview with Brigham Young, upon Mormonism generally, which he thus reports in a letter to The Tribune: My friend Dr. Bernhisel, late delegate in Congress, took me this after noon, by appointment, to meet Brigham Young, President of the Mormon Church, who had expressed a willingness to receive me at two p. M. We were very cordially welcomed at the door by the president, who led us into the second-story parlour of the largest of his houses (he has three), where I was introduced to Heber C. Kimball, General Wells, General Ferguson, Albert Carrington, Elias Smith, and several other leading men in the church, with two full- grown sons of the president. After some up*mpor- tant conversation on general topics, I stated that I had co^ ^ quest of 31 S LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. fuller knowledge respecting the doctrines and polity of the Mormon Church, and would like to ask some questions bearing directly on these, if there were no objection. President Young avowing his willingness to respond to all pertinent inquiries, the conversation proceeded substan tially as follows : H. G. Am I to regard Mormonism (so-called) as a new religion, or as simply a new development of Christianity ? B. Y. We hold that there can be no true Christian Church, without a priesthood directly commissioned by, and in immediate communication with the Son of God and Saviour of mankind. Such a church is that of the Latter-Day Saints, called by their enemies Mormons ; we know no other that even pretends to have present and direct revelations of God s will. H. G. Then I am to understand that you regard all other churches pro fessing to be Christian as the Church of Rome regards all churches not in communion with itself as schismatic, heretical, and out of the way of salvation ? B. Y. Yes, substantially. H. G. Apart from this, in what respect do your doctrines differ essen tially from those of our Orthodox Protestant Churches the Baptist or Methodist, for example ? B. Y. We hold the doctrines of Christianity, as revealed in the Old and New Testaments also in the Book of Mormon, which teaches the same cardinal truths and those only. H. G. Do you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity ? B. Y. We do ; but not exactly as it is held by other churches. We oelieve in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as equal, but not iden tical not as one person [being]. 2 We believe in all the Bible teaches on nis subject. B. G. Do you believe in a personal devil a distinct, conscious, spiritual icing, wnose nature and acts are essentially malignant and evil ? B. *. We do. H. G. Do you hold the doctrine of eternal punishment? B. Y. We do ; though perhaps not exactly as other churches do. We .Believe it as the Bible teaches it. H. G. I understand that you regard baptism by immersion as essential ? B. Y. We do. H. G. Do you practice infant baptism ? B. Y. No. H. G. Do you make removal to these valleys obligatory on your con verts ? B. Y. They would consider themselves greatly aggrieved if they were not invited hither. We hold to such a gathering together of God s people, as the Bible foretells, and that this is the place, and now is the time appointed for its consummation. "I am quite sure that President Young used here the word "person" as I have it; but I am not aware that Christians of any denomination do regard tho Father, Sun sad H.^ly 3phit, as one person. "MORMONISM." 319 R .}. The predictions to which you refer, have usually, I think, been undt rstood to indicate Jerusalem (or Judea) as the place of such gathering. B. Y. Yes, for the Jews not for others. H. G. What is the position of your church with respect to slavery ? B. Y. We consider it of divine institution, and not to be abolished until the curse pronounced on Ham shall have been removed from his descendants. H. G. Are any slaves now held in this territory ? B. Y. There are. H. G. Do your territorial laws uphold slavery ? B. Y. Those laws : are printed you can read for yourself. If slaves are brought here by those who owned them in the States, we do not favour their escape from the service of those owners. H. G. Am I to infer that Utah if admitted as a member of the Federal Union, will be a slave State? B. Y. No ; she will be a free State. Slavery here would prove useless and unprofitable. I regard it generally as a curse to the masters. I my self hire many labourers, and pay them fair wages; I could not afford to own them. I can do better than subject myself to an obligation to feed and clothe their families, to provide and care for them in sickness and health. Utah is not adapted to slave-labour. H. G. Let me now be enlightened with regard more especially to your church polity ; I understand that you require each member to pay over one-tenth of all he produces or earns to the church. B. Y. That is a requirement of our faith. There is no compulsion as to the payment. Each member acts in the premises according to his pleasure, under the dictates of his own conscience. H. G. tVhat is done with the proceeds of this tithing? B. Y. Part of it is devoted to building temples, and other places of worship; part to helping the poor and needy converts on their way to this country; and the largest portion to the support of the poor among the saints. H. G. Is none of it paid to bishops, and other dignitaries of the church ? B. Y. Not one penny. No bishop, no elder, no deacon, no other church officer, receives any compensation for his official services. A bishop is often required to put his hand into his own pocket, and provide therefrom for the poor of his charge; but he never receives anything for his ser vices. H. G. How, then, do your ministers live? B. Y. By the labour of their own hands, like the first apostles. Every bishop, every elder, may be daily seen at work in the field or the shop, like his neighbours; every minister of the church has his proper calling, by whioh he earns the bread of his family; he who cannot, or will not do the church s work for nothing is not wanted in her service; even our law yers (pointing to General Ferguson and another present, who are the regular lawyers of the church), are paid nothing for their services; I am the only person in the church who has not a regular calling apart 320 LIFE OF UOJJACE OKEELEY. from the cnurch s service, and I never received one farthing from her treasury; if I obtain anything from the tithing-house, I am charged with, ;tnd pay for it, just as any one else would; the clerks in the tithing-store are paid like other clerks ; but no one is ever paid for any service pertain ing to the ministry. We think a man who cannot make his living aside from the ministry of Christ unsuited to that office. I am called rich, and consider myself worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; but no dollar of it was ever paid me by the church, nor for any service as a min ister of the everlasting Gospel. I lost nearly all I had when we were broken up in Missouri, and driven from that State. I was nearly stripped again, when Joseph Smith was murdered, and we were driven from Illinois ; but nothing was ever made up to me by the church, nor by any one. I believe I know how to acquire property, and how to take care of it. H. G. Can you give me any rational explanation of the aversion and hatred with which your people are generally regarded by those among whom they have lived and with whom they have been brought directly in contact ? B. Y. No other explanation than is afforded by the crucifixion of Christ and the kindred treatment of God s ministers, prophets and saints in all ages. H. G. I know that a new sect is always decried and traduced that it is hardly ever deemed respectable to belong to one that the Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Universalists, etc., have each in their turn been regarded in the infancy of their sect as the offscouring of the earth ; yet I cannot remember that either of them were ever generally represented and regarded by the older sects of their early days as thieves, robbers, mur derers. B. Y. If you will consult the cotemporary Jewish account of the life and acts of Jesus Christ, you will find that he and his disciples were accused of every abominable deed and purpose robbery and murder included. Such a work is still extant, and may be found by those who seek it. H. G. What do you say of the so-called Danites, or Destroying Angels, belonging to your church ? B. Y. What do you say ? I know of no such band, no such persons or organization. I hear of them only in the slanders of our enemies. H. G. With regard, then, to the grave question on which your doctrines and practices are avowedly at war with those of the Christian world that of a plurality of wives is the system of your church acceptable to the majority of its women? B. Y. They could not be more averse to it than I was when it was first revealed to us as the Divine will. I think they generally accept it, as I do, as the will of God. H. G. How general is polygamy among you ? B. Y. I could not say. Some of those present (heads of the church) have each but one wife ; others have more : each determines what is his individual duty. "MORMONISM." 321 H. G. What is the largest number of wives belonging to any one man ? B. Y. I have fifteen ; I know no one who has more ; but some of those sealed to me are old ladies whom I regard rather as mothers than wives, but whom I have taken home to cherish and support. H. G. Does not the Apostle Paul say that a bishop should be "the hus band of one wife?" B. Y. So we hold. We do not regard any but a married man as fitted for the office of bishop. But the apostle does not forbid a bishop having more wives than one. H. G. Does not Christ say that he who puts away his wife, or marries one whom another has put away, commits adultery ! B. Y. Yes; and I hold that no man should ever put away his wife except for adultery not always even for that. Such is my individual view of the matter. I do not say that wives have never been put away in our church, but that I do not approve of the practice. H. G. How do you regard what is commonly termed the Christian Sabbath ? B. Y. As a divinely appointed day of rest. We enjoin all to rest from secular labour on that day. We would have no man enslaved to the Sab bath, but we enjoin all to respect and enjoy it. Such is, as nearly as I can recollect, the substance of nearly two hours conversation, wherein much was said incidentally that would not be worth reporting, even if I could remember and reproduce it, and wherein others bore a part ; but as President Young is the first minister of the Mormon church, and bore the principal part in the conversation, I have reported his answers alone to my questions and observations. The others appeared uniformly to defer to his views, and to acquiesce fully in his responses and explanations. He spoke readily, not always with gram matical accuracy, but with no appearance of hesitation or reserve, and with no apparent desire to conceal anything, nor did he repel any of my questions as impertinent. He was very plainly dressed in thin summer clothing, and with no air of sanctimony or fanaticism. In appearance, he is a portly, frank, good-natured, rather thick-set man of fifty-five, seeming to enjoy life, and to be in no particular hurry to get to heaven. His asso ciates are plain men, evidently born and reared to a life of labour, and looking as little like crafty hypocrites or swindlers as any body of men I ever met. The absence of cant or snuffle from their manner was marked and general ; yet, I think I may fairly say that their Mormonism has not impoverished them that they were generally poor men when they embraced it, and are now in very comfortable circumstances as men averaging three or four wives apiece certainly need to be. Mr. Greeley judged of the Mormon religion and Mormon society with philosophical impartiality. The spirit of the religion appeared to him Judaic rather than Christian. Nei ther from the pulpit, he heard two lengthy sermons, nor 21 322 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. elsewhere from a Mormon did he hear a single spontaneous, hearty recognition of the essential brotherhood of the human race, or one generous prayer for the enlightenment and salva tion of all mankind. The Book of Mormons he discovered to be treated as of equal authority and importance with the Old and New Testaments. He did not regard the great body of the Mormons as knaves and hypocrites, but as dupes only. The great mass of the people, he believed, meant to be honest, just, and humane, but they were before and above all things else, Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, and in the name of religion, members of the community had committed the greatest of crimes and been shielded from just punishment by religious means. He did not find a single Mormon woman who approved of polygamy by word or look, and he believed the Mormons would soon receive a "revelation causing them to give up this institution. They were generally industrious arid frugal, and had no outcasts among them. But upon the whole, evil so much predominated over good in Mormon society, in Mr. Greeley s judgment, which was certainly based upon careful and generous observation, that he made it the occasion of a vigorous and lively attack upon "Popular Sovereignty. 1 During his stay in Salt Lake City, Mr. Greeley attended a meeting of the Deseret Typographical Association. Not only printers, but noted "Saints" took part in the meeting, and in their speeches said little except to extol Mormonism. Mr. Greeley being called out, after properly referring to the oppres sion, of which some of the " Saints " had spoken, mentioned the gigantic oppression of slavery, and very pointedly condemned Mormon silence and indifference upon that subject. At a later hour in the evening, some one arose and requested that Mr. Greeley make a speech setting forth his views upon Woman s Rights! Whereupon, it being about time for supper, he spoke as follows: " Mr. President, I can make the speech our friend required in just one minute. I hold it the right of every woman to do any and every thing that she can do well, provided it ought to be done. If it ought not to be done at all, or if she cannot do it, then she has no right to do it; but if it ought to be done, and she can do it, then her right to do it is, to my IN CALIFORNIA. mind, indisputable. And that is all that I have to say, now or ever, on the subject, of Woman s Rights." From the city of Saints he proceeded to Sacramento, by Camp Floyd, where he observed certain abuses in the Army to which he invited the attention of Congress; down the Hum- boldt, the desolation of which region struck him as greater than that of the American Desert, and rhere, he says, " famine sits enthroned, and waves his sceptre over a dominion exprsssly made for him; 1 on by Carson City, to the Capital of our new El Dorado. On reaching California, Mr. Greeley discovered that the mili tary authorities of Mexico were in arms against him. Some paper had published a burlesque statement, at the time the journalist was travelling over the plains, that he was coming to California to take command of all the filibusters, and to invade and conquer Mexico! The Mexican commander at Mazatlan took this hoax as a matter of dead earnest, and issued a solemn proclamation warning the people against this Horace Greeley "a most diabolical, bloodthirsty, and unmerciful man. "This dangerous man," continued the Mexican, " is not of the common school of filibusters: they wish for plunder, he for blood and murderous deeds." Meantime, Mr. Greeley proceeded from Placerville as the honoured guest of the Golden State. The following account of this portion of the journey and of his reception at the Capital, is full of excellent biographical matter. It appeared in The Sacramento Union of August 2, 1859, a journal then as now conducted with enterprise, ability, and notable vivacity: "On Sunday the committee of arrangements held an informal meeting, and the committee of reception detailed to meet him at Folsom were put in telegraphic communication with the master of ceremonies at Placer, ville; the result of which was an agreement, on the part of friends of the distinguished stranger in the latter city, to deliver him on Monday after noon, in good order and sound condition, by private conveyance, to such of his friends in Sacramento as should be in waiting at Folsom. ,T. P. Robinson, Superintendent of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, placed a special train at the service of the committee, with the freedom of the road to all they should invite to accompany them. "Horace Greeley passed the night, or such portions of it as he was 324 LIFE OF HORACE GBEELEY. allowed to have to himself, at the Gary House, and left Placerville at 11.20 A. M., in company with G. W. Swan of that city, in an open-front, two- horse carriage. At Mud Springs, about one hundred and fifty of the townspeople and miners had assembled to greet him, under a banner stretched across the street. Greeley did not, however, leave his seat, but exchanged salutations with the citizens at the door of the carriage. On the way down the mountains, Mr. Swan s lively and observant companion noticed with frequent exclamations of wonder the enterprise and labour evinced in mining operations, and the miners apparatus for conveying water: spoke of the barrenness of the hillsides, but thought it strange that the fertile spots in the valleys should be left unoccupied by tillers of the soil after the miners had denuded the hillsides of gold ; expressed great surprise, as all new-comers do, at the fine appearance of our cattle contrasted with the apparent lean and dry pasturage ; thought the fruit in the gardens by the roadsides looked astonishingly thrifty ; and after some further observations of the same character, and partaking with a good appetite of the dinner served for him and his companion at Padurah, the head of the great American press sank quietly back in one corner of the carriage, and was prone to indulge in such unrefreshing slumber as a warm day over a dusty and tiresome road can alone inspire. "While the editor of The New- York Tribune slept his friends were wide awake in the City of the Plains. At 2.30 p. M. the reception committee, and about twenty -five or thirty others whom they had invited, stepped into a special car, and, under the convoy of Superintendent Robinson, were soon flying on their road to Folsom. The committee reached Folsom in forty minutes by the Superintendent s watch, and learned, on arriving, that the man with the white coat had not yet made his appearance. The receptionists strolled about the interesting town of Folsom, and, their hospitable ardour communicating to sundry of the inhabitants, the cannon was brought out, and soon a thundering report, which must have wakened Greeley a mile distant, if he had sleet until that time, announced that the friends of the great expected were ready to receive him with open arms. At a quarter to four, a carriage drawn by a pair of roan-coloured ponies drove at a pretty smart pace down the main street, and straight up to the depot. By this time most of the committee had wandered off in the vicin ity of the bridge, so that when .the proprietor of a little old glazed travelling-bag, marked H. GREELEY, 154 Nassau Street, New- York, 1855, a very rusty and well- w r orn white coat, a still rustier and still more worn and faded blue-cotton umbrella, together with a roll of blankets, were deposited from the carriage, there was no one present of the committee to take him by the hand. The crowd about the depot, however, closed in so densely that Greeley was fain to make for the first open door that presented itself. This, unfortunately, happened to be the bar-room attached to the ticket-office ; and here some of the committee found him, with his back turned defiantly against the sturdy rows of bottles and decanters, talking informally with some friends who had been beforehand : and here the committee seized their guest, and with considerable trepidation hurried m CALIFORNIA. 325 him across to the hotel over the freight depot, followed by a large and increasing crowd. Greeley was escorted to an upper room, where J. McClatchy, on behalf of the committee, found opportunity to welcome him in set phrase, in about the following language: MR. GREELEY: This committee, chosen by the citizens of Sacramento without regard to party, have waited upon you to bid you welcome to the capital of the State. The people of our city have long looked upon you as one of the noblest friends of California. They desire to show their appreciation of your labours in its behalf by giving you a cordial wel come. Arrangements have been made in our city to receive you and make your stay agreeable, and we are ready at your leisure, to escort you to the friends who are waiting your coming. In their name, and in the name of this, their committee, I welcome you to our city. "Mr. Greeley replied very nearly as follows: " I should have been glad, if I could have had my choice, to have avoided a formal reception, because it looks like parade, and gives an idea of seeking for glory, which is not a part of my plan in coming to Cali fornia. I shall be happy, however, to go with you, and to-night I would like to say something about the Pacific Railroad. I am at your service, gentlemen, this evening, but I ve got my business affairs to tend to after ward. I have not yet seen my letters: they are waiting for me in your city. I have other places to visit, and wish to see all I can, and meet all the friends I can here and elsewhere. " These remarks were delivered in the peculiar off-hand manner of the great Reformer, and in the high key and slender and wavering tones which are characteristic of his public speaking. When he had finished there was a little pause, as though each of the committee was cogitating what next was to be done, when Greeley broke in with the bluntness so often ascribed to him, Well, I m ready to go when you are. O. C. Wheeler, Secretary of the State Agricultural Society, now extended an invitation to him to accompany the visiting committee on their rounds of visits among the farms and orchards of the State, setting out next week ; which invitation Greeley thought he would accept, but must take it under consideration. After several persons had been introduced, Greeley was escorted back to the depot, followed by all Folsoin for four miles back, as one of the crowd declared. Near the ticket-office, having signified to the committee that he would like to say something to the people, Mr. Mooney of the Folsom Express enjoined silence, and Greeley said: " FELLOW-CITIZENS: I know very well that occasions like this are not such as a person should choose for the purpose of making a speech, and I do not wish to be regarded as having come among you for speech-making. I have come to your far-off land as an American comes to visit Americans. I don t have time to read books, and I want to learn what I can of the men and country I have come to see by practical observation. I want to see the land which, during the last ten years, has furnished gold enough to check, if it could not entirely overcome, the tide of reverse following the commercial extravagance of the East. One of the objects of my visit 326 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. has been to see what it is practicable to accomplish for the Pacific Rail road. [Cheers.] I know that great difficulties and obstacles lie in the way, but I also know that every addition of wealth and population on this side lessens those difficulties, every one hundred thousand souls you receive into your State increases, not the necessity, for that has all along existed, but the imminence of that necessity, so to speak. It is a work which must be done in our day, and, if we live the ordinary lives of men, we shall see it accomplished. Every wave of emigration to your shores will beat down an obstable. I entreat you then, fellow-citizens, to go on and draw around you the means for this great fulfilment of the noble plan. Let us build up an American Republic, not as now, the two sides of a great desert, but let us make a concentrated and harmonious whole. Those who come to join you here should not pursue the journey as now, wearily,, sadly, and by slow degrees, over these great plains. We must work with all our energies for the prosperity of the Pacific Railroad. [Cheers.] I thank you for the manner in which you have welcomed me, and I shall return home to labour with increased vigour for the road and for the suc cess of the Union. "This short speech was greeted with hearty applause by over one hun dred and fifty persons, who had assembled to catch a sight of the flaxen locks and benevolent face of Horace Greeley. At its close he was con ducted into the car, and the committee and their guest were soon on their way to this city at a rattling pace. " The committee of arrangements had prepared seven carriages to be in waiting at the depot, on the arrival of the car containing their guest. A telegraphic despatch announced the moment of his departure from Folsom. In less time than it had taken to go out, the whistle was heard announcing that the train was coming down the levee. As the car approached the city, the committee, who had up to this time been acting without much concert or regularity, found a rare subject for a concurrence of speech, at least, in Greeley s old white coat and umbrella. Some of the ragged parts of the coat were converted into little mementos by the more enterprising members of the committee. It was about, five o clock when the train reached the depot. Greeley was handed into a carriage, accom panied by the committee distributed through the other vehicles, and was driven to the St. George Hotel, where rooms have been in keeping for him several days. In the parlour of this hotel a large crowd soon began to gather, and H. L. Nichols, President of the Board of Supervisors, making his appearance, with other members of the general committee, was intro duced to their guest by D. Meeker. Dr. Nichols then made the following address : " MR. GREELEY: It is with pleasure, sir, that, on behalf of the citizens of Sacramento, I welcome you to our city. It is probable that but few of us have had the honour of your personal acquaintance ; but, sir, you are not unknown to us. You are known to us as you are known to the world at large ; but more particularly are you known to us as the true friend of California, and as such we are ever proud to acknowledge you. We thank SACRAMENTO. . 327 you that you have taken sufficient interest in our welfare to leave your home in the great metropolis of the East and wend your way across the vast plains and rugged mountains that separate us, to visit us in our West ern home. We trust that, while you travel through our State, you may not be disappointed with the progress which our citizens have made dur ing the short time allowed them. Perhaps you may be aware, sir, that the place which you now behold as the city of Sacramento was but little more than ten years ago a vast plain, with here and there a few cloth tents, which were occupied by the hardy pioneers of the State. We to-day in size claim to be the second city on the Pacific coast; our inhabitants number not less than 15,000; we have a property valuation of nearly $10,000.000; we have erected comfortable dwellings for our families, and houses for places of business; reared numerous and ample churches dedi cated to the worship of Almighty God, and established schools for the education of our children, in fact, we enjoy most of the blessings that our sister cities in the East may lay claim to. The hospitalities of this our city I extend to you, and trust that during your sojourn here we may be enabled to make your stay pleasant and agreeable, so that when you return to your home in the East, and may have occasion to refer in mem ory to the few days spent with us, your feelings may be rather of pleasure than of regret. Xow, sir. permit me again, in my own behalf and in behalf of my fellow-citizens, to bid you a hearty and cordial welcome to the City of the Plains, the capital city of the Golden State. " The address was followed by a round of applause, after which Mr. Greeley spoke as follows : " MR. CHAIRMAN: It was observed by a great Southern statesman that the American Revolution was not that unnatural or chance struggle, not that abnormal thing which we were disposed to think it. The Colony that stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock were no longer a Colony, but a State, from that hour. It is thus that American genius and American cultivation go before, and improvise the arts and a nation s polity. Ten years ago you were here familiar with hangings and mob law. I was in London, and I well remember the remark of a British nobleman, that your course was the proper working out of the old English law. Men must obey the voice of the community, which is the law, in all cases; and, if they do not, they must suffer the penalty of their offending equally in orderly as well as in disorderly states of government. The progress you have made in carrying out your principles of government successfully is your highest triumph. Better than your gold or your thrift is the fact that here is a population, made up of New-Englanders, men of the South, foreign-born, natives of China and almost every part of the globe, which gradually, through periods of disorder, you have reduced to the best forms of enlightenment, crystallizing them, so to speak, in a perfect and durable shape. I do think this is better than gold, for that the savages can dig. " Your schools, your churches, and your obedience to the laws are your greatest wealth. And the secret of your success is, that labour here meets 328 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. its just reward. California labour rejoices in that assurance. I heard them talk of the want of capital in California. I do not think capital is necessary. When people want labour, and can get it, it is better than capital. [Applause.] Your gold product gives assurance that the labour will always find this reward. At the same time your gold gives an impulse to civilization, and I think it is safe to promise that your State will increase until it becomes the most populous in the Union. [Applause.] I came this long way not to see California alone. I wanted to see those interesting spaces where the most primitive forms of life can be viewed and contrasted within the borders of our own Republic with the highest civilization. I wish to study men as I can see them in their cabins, and to improve by observation what I have been denied acquiring through books and the essays of wise men. I would gladly have come to your city as any stran ger, satisfied with meeting here and there an old acquaintance, and so passed along without formality and public attention. I was aware that I knew some among you, but I had no idea of meeting so many old friends. And though I would have been glad to avoid a reception, still I cannot refuse to meet you in such a way as you think proper. Gentlemen, I thank you for your kindness. I have done. [Applause.] " A large number of citizens, at the conclusion of his speech, were introduced to Mr. Greeley. All who have known him in the East remark that he has never appeared so hearty and well as at present. He looked somewhat jaded and dusty from his long ride, but showed no signs of weariness. The crowd left him at 5%, and he was not disturbed until lie was waited upon to accompany a portion of the committee to a very handsome dinner. About twenty guests sat down at 6J^, and, after dis patching the meal in a business-like way, Greeley was permitted to retire, and make ready for the evening s address. From the rapidity with which this was done, it is fair to presume that he had only to get his hat. A few minutes after eight he was on his way to Benton s Church. At the church he delivered a very able and telling speech upon the Pacific Railroad." The same journal thus speaks at length of Mr. Greeley s visit and the influence it would be likely to have in the great enterprise in which California" was so deeply interested: "Greeley has come and gone. He was here a little short of thirteen hours, during which time he held an informal levee, made a reception speech, partook of a special dinner, delivered an address, saw something of the city, opened and read his letters, partly arranged the programme of his journey through the State, and took a sufficient night s rest to enable him to be up at five the next morning, and take his seat in the stage which left the next hour for Grass Valley, a journey of between sixty and seventy miles over a wearisome mountain road. This despatch is characteristic of the man. His prompt, business-like method, and his skill in crowding events into a narrow compass, not less than his facility of compressing AMONG THE MINES. 329 facts and arguments in a short, off-hand speech, would commend him to popular admiration in this country, if he had no other qualities to support his fame. His brief personal intercourse with our citizens while here, and his practical suggestions on the Pacific Railroad, accompanied by the earnest and forcible manner of their delivery, have made a favourable impression in the community. At Folsom, where he was received by the committee sent from this city, and where he volunteered a short address, the crowd were at first sensibly moved to attempt a little good-humoured joking at the quaint personal appearance of the philosopher and his odd style of oratory, but before he had finished his second or third sentence, their attention was very earnestly on the speaker, and he was interrupted as well as complimented at the close, by hearty cheering. This good opin ion appears to extend to all classes, if we except the ultra Southern politicians; and a general wish is felt to hear further from this editor, who writes for, and is believed by 220,000 subscribers, and who has taken the field in person and in our midst, a Peter the Hermit in enthusiasm for the Pacific Railroad. While this abolition editor, this wretched fanatic, according to that moderate Lecompton organ, the San Francisco Herald, is appealing to our national sympathies on this railroad question, declar ing that it is not a question of localities; that, whether it runs to New- York, or to San Antonia, Texas (the favourite route of the San Francisco Herald ), it would be all the same, the contrast presented by our Demo cratic Senator and Congressmen who are now addressing the people is peculiarly striking. The one, strong in honest purpose, and full of ner vous energy, pressing the need of this road, and the duty of our citizens toward the government ; the others not deigning to give even an explan ation of their views and the policy of thousands of our countrymen in the East. Neither the views nor the personal influence of our Lecompton delegates to the next Congress will be of any practical benefit to the road, admitting (which we do not) that they are its sincere and disinterested friends. " The notable circumstance that the editor of The Tribune is endeavour ing to arouse the country in behalf of a Pacific Railroad immediately on his arrival at the end of his long journey, almost before he has brushed the dust of travel from his garments, will carry greater weight with it in the East than all Gwin has ever said, or can say, in Congress. It will be personal testimony in favour of the enterprise of the strongest kind." Mr. Greeley spent about a week among the mines and miners of El Dorado, Placer, and Nevada counties, being the heart of the auriferous region of California. He devoted most of his ~ time to the study of mining operations, but made in this region as well as elsewhere a number of Republican speeches which had much to do with giving the State to Lincoln in the follow ing year. After the gold-region, the Yosemite. His letter of 330 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. August 14, describes the scenes which the genius of Bierstadt lias also so sublimely illustrated: "Descent into the Yosemite is only practicable at three points one near the head of the valley, where a small stream makes "in from the direction of the main ridge of the Sierra, down which there is a trail from the vicinity of Water River, Utah a trail practicable, I believe, for men on foot only. The other two lead in near the outlet, from Mariposas and Coulterville respectively, on opposite banks of the Merced, and are prac ticable for sure-footed mules or horses. We, of course, made our descent by the Mariposas trail, on the south side of the little river which here escapes from the famous valley by a canon which water alone can safely, if at all, traverse, being shut in by lofty precipices, and broken by suc cessive falls. " My friends insisted that I should look over the brink into the profound abyss before clambering down its side; but I, apprehending giddiness, and feeling the need of steady nerves, firmly declined. So we formed line again, and moved on. "The night was clear and bright, as all summer nights in this region are ; the atmosphere cool, but not really cold ; the moon had risen before 7 o clock, and was shedding so much light as to bother us in our forest-path where the shadow of a standing pine looked exceedingly like the substance of a fallen one, and many semblances were unreal and misleading. It was often hard to realize that the dark, narrow curtain-like passsge to the left was our trail, and not the winding, broader, moonlighted-opening on the right. The safest course was to give your horse a free rein, and trust to his sagacity or self-love for keeping the trail. As we descended by zigzags the north face of the all but perpendicular mountain our moonlight soon left us, or was present only by reflection from the opposite cliff. Soon, the trail became at once so steep, so rough, and so tortuous, that we all dis mounted; but my attempt at walking proved a miserable failure. I had been riding with a bad Mexican stirrup, which barely admitted the toes of my left foot; and continual pressure on these had sprained and swelled them, so that walking was positive torture. I persevered in the attempt, till my companions insisted on my remounting, and thus floundering slowly to the bottom. By steady effort, we descended the three miles (four thousand feet perpendicular) in two hours, and stood at night by the rush ing, roaring waters of the Merced. " That first full, deliberate, gaze up the opposite height! can I ever forget it ? The valley is here scarcely half a mile wide, while its northern wall of mainly naked, perpendicular granite is at least four thousand feet high probably more. But the modicum of moonlight that fell into this awful gorge gave to that precipice a vagueness of outline, an indefinite vastness, a ghostly and weird spirituality. Had the mountain spoken to me in audible voice, or began to lean over with the purpose of burying me beneath its crushing mass, I should hardly have been surprised. Its whiteness, thrown into bold relief by the patches of trees or shrubs which THE TOSEMTTE. 331 fringed or flecked it wherever a few handfuls of its moss, slowly decom posed to earth, could contrive to hold on, continually suggested the presence of snow, which suggestion, with difficulty refuted, was at once renewed. And, looking up the valley, we saw just such mountain preci pices, barely separated by intervening water-courses (mainly dry at this season) of inconsiderable depth, and only receding sufficiently to make room for a very narrow meadow inclosing the river, to the furthest limit, of vision. " We discussed the propriety of camping directly at the foot of the pass, but decided against it, because of the inadequacy of the grass at this point for our tired, hungry beasts, and resolved to push on to the nearest of the two houses in the valley, which was said to be four miles distant. To my dying day, I shall remember that weary, interminable ride up the valley. We had been on foot since daylight; it was now past midnight; all were nearly used up, and I in torture from over twelve hours steady riding on the hardest trotting horse in America. Yet we pressed on, and on, through clumps of trees, and bits of forest, and patches of meadow, and over hillocks of mountain debrit, mainly granite bowlders of every size, often nearly as round as cannon balls, forming all but perpendicular banks to the capricious torrent that brought them hither those stupen dous precipices on either side glaring down upon us all the while. How many times our heavy eyes I mean those of my San Francisco friend and my own were lighted up by visions of that intensely desired cabin vis ions which seemed distinct and unmistakable, but, which, alas! a nearer view proved to be made up of moonlight and shadow, rock and trees, into which they faded one after another. It seemed at length that we should never reach the cabin; and my wavering mind recalled elfish German stories of the Wild Huntsman, and of men who, having accepted invita tions to a midnight chase, found on their return that said chase had been prolonged till all their relatives and friends were dead, and no one could be induced to recognize or recollect them. Gladly could I have thrown myself recklessly from the saddle, and lain where I fell till morning, but this would never answer, and we kept steadily on. Time and the hour wear out the longest day. " At length the real cabin one made of posts and beams, and whip- sawed boards, instead of rock, and shadow, and moonshine was reached, and we all eagerly dismounted, turning out our weary steeds into abun dant grass, and stirring up the astonished landlord, who had never before received guests at that unseemly hour. (It was after one A. M.) He made us welcome, however, to his best accommodations, which would have found us lenient critics even if they had been worse ; and I crept into in} rude but clean bed so soon as possible, while the r,est awaited the prep aration of some refreshment for the inner man. There was never a dainty that could have tempted me to eat at that hour. I am told that none ever before travelled from Bear Valley to the Yosemite in one day I am con fident no green-horns ever did. The distance can hardly exceed thirty LIFE OF HORACE GREELEF. miles by an airline; but only a bird could traverse that line, while, by way of Mariposas and the South Fork, it must be fully sixty miles, with a rise and fall of not less than twenty thousand feet. " The fall of the Yosemite, so called, is a humbug. It is not the Merced River that makes this fall, but a mere tributary trout-brook, which pitches in from the north by a barely once-broken descent of two thousand six hundred feet, while the Merced enters the vallej^ at its eastern extremity, over falls of six hundred and two hundred and fifty feet. But a river thrice as large as the Merced, at this season, would be utterly dwarfed by all the other accessories of this prodigious chasm. Only a Mississippi or a Niagara could be adequate to their exactions. I readily concede that a hundred times the present amount of water may roll down the Yosemite fall in the months of May and June, when the snows are melting from the central ranges of the Sierra Nevada, which bound this abyss on the east; but this would not add a fraction to the wonder of this vivid exemplifica tion of the divine power and majesty. At present, the little stream that leaps down the Yosemite, and is all but shattered to mist by the amazing descent, looks like a tape-line let down from the cloud-tapped height to measure the depth of the abyss. The Yosemite Valley (or Gorge) is the most unique and majestic of nature s marvels, but the Yosemite Fall is of little account. Were it absent, the valley would not be perceptibly less worthy of a fatiguing visit. " We traversed the valley from end to end next day, but an accumula tion of details on such a subject only serves to confuse and blunt the observer s powers of perception and appreciation. Perhaps the visitor who should be content with a long look into the abyss from the most con venient height, without braving the toil of a descent would be wiser than all of us; and yet that first glance upward from the foot will long haunt me as more impressive than any look downward from the summit could be. " I shall not multiply details, nor waste paper in noting all the foolish names which foolish people have given to different peaks or turrets. Just think of two giant-stone towers, or pillars, which rise a thousand feet above the towering cliff which form their base, being styled The Two Sisters! Could anything be more maladroit and lackadaisical? The Dome is a high, round naked peak, which rises between the Merced and its little tributary from the inmost" recesses of the Sierra Nevada already instanced, and which towers to an altitude of over five thousand feet above the waters at its base. Picture to yourself a perpendicular wall of bare granite nearly or quite one mile high ! Yet there are some dozen or score of peaks in all, ranging from three thousand to five thousand feet above the valley; and a biscuit tossed from any of them would strike very near its base, and its fragments go bounding and falling still further. I certainly miss here the glaciers of Chamonix; but I know no single wonder of nature on earth which can claim a superiority over the Yosemite. Just dream yourself for one hour in a chasm nearly ten miles long, with egress save for birds and water, but at three points, up the face of the precipices from three thousand to four thousand feet high, the chasm scarcely more SAN FRANCISCO. 333 than a mile wide at any point, and tapering to a mere gorge, or canon at either end, with walls of mainly naked and perpendicular white granite, from three thousand to five thousand feet high, so that looking up to the sky from it, is like looking out of an unfathomable profound and you will have some conception of the Yoseniite." After visiting the Yosemite, Mr. Greeley remitted nothing of his busy life. He visited the country of "the big trees," Colonel Fremont s mines, Marysville, and other portions of California, taking careful notes of the resources of the State, delivering political and agricultural addresses, and " making himself generally useful." He arrived at San Francisco the Golden Gate about the middle of August, and was received with the utmost hospitality. The guest of the city, he deliv ered addresses to institutes, schools, the public. There was a Pacific Railroad meeting in his honour, of which The Bulletin newspaper gave the following account: "The Grand Pacific Railroad mass meeting, which took place on the evening of 17th August, in front of the Oriental, on the occasion of the public appearance in San Francisco of the Hon. Horace Greeley, was an imposing demonstration, and in all respects a decided success. By 1% o clock the people had collected in vast numbers, and the plaza and street in front of the hotel were crowded. There must have been, at a fair com putation, five thousand people present, and all manifested much interest in the great object for which the meeting was called, and in the man who was to address them. "The Oriental Hotel was brilliantly illuminated for the occasion Between the pillars of the veranda were hung many Japanese lanterns, and the balustrades were filled with lamps. As it was known many ladies would be present, seats were placed on the balcony for them ; and long before the speaking commenced, these and the windows and rooms open ing upon them were filled. "At 8 o clock Ira P. Rankin stepped forward upon the platform and nominated a president and officers of the meeting. "As soon as the meeting was organized, Mr. Greeley made his appear ance upon the stand which had been erected in front of the hotel, and was raised about six feet above the street. His appearance was greeted with prolonged cheers. Colonel Crockett stepped forward for the purpose of introducing the speaker; but the crowd was so anxious to see and hear Mr. Greeley, that for a few minutes he could not be heard. The more distant portions of the assembly cried, We cannot see Mr. Greeley, Take the balcony, We want to see him. Colonel Crockett replied that Mr. Greeley protested that he could not be heard from the balcony. The crowd semed determined that they would see the speaker, and hurrahed and 334 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. vociferated until the president stated that Mr. Greeley would compromise by standing on the table. At this proposition there was great applause, and order being restored, after a few words of introduction by the presi dent of the meeting, Mr. Greeley mounted the table and stood up before the people, at which there was again hearty and repeated cheers. Several firemen s torches were so disposed on the stand as to throw their light upon him. " The personal appearance of Mr. Greeley is familiar to many of our readers. He is above the medium height, rather thin, and has a slight stoop. His head is bald, with the exception of light flaxen locks at the sides and back. Though nearly fifty years of age, there are no wrinkles in his face; on the contrary, his features, except for his baldness, would indicate quite a young man. There is a peculiar brightness in his eyes, and the general expression of his face is mildness and benignity. His dress, last evening, after drawing oft his drab overcoat (from which the mountaineers cut oft" all the buttons), was plain black with a light neck cloth. The famous white hat had been exchanged for one of dun-colored wool. His late journey across the plains, although it fatigued him much, has made him weigh more than ordinarily, and has given him a fresh and hale appearance." The speech which Mr. Greeley delivered "from the table" is described by the journals as one of great power and real elo-, quence. His address before the Mechanics Institute was profoundly thoughtful. He insisted that Labour, in order to accomplish its true and sublime destiny, must be educated. " The new idea of our time," he said " is founded upon a better understanding of the law of God and humanity. It recognizes all useful labour as essentially laudable and honourable, the greater honour where there is the greater proficiency. The digger who makes the thousandth part of a canal is not of honour equal to the scientific engineer who fully accomplishes the work of its construction. More honour with greater intel ligence, but honour to each in his degree, but the larger honour is due to him who accomplishes the greater result. Simple manual labour can never achieve the highest reward, nor command the greatest regard. Hand and head must work together. To accomplish great results the labourer must be intelligent arid educated. In this country, the price of labour is comparatively high, and yet it is a question whether it is not, on the whole, cheaper in the end than else where. Nichols Biddle, and other distinguished thinkers JOHN BKOWN. 335 upon the subject, asserted tliat American labour at a higher price was cheaper than the labour of Spain or most other countries at almost nominal rates. In building the bed of a o railroad, for instance, it is found cheaper with American labour, or labour under their guidance and direction, than with any other. This is proved by the fact that railroads can be built in America at one-sixth part of the cost of constructing them in Italy, and I believe, in Ireland also. Labour, as it becomes better educated, will also become more effective, and when it receives its double reward, it will be more profitable. Mr. Greeley returned to New- York by way of Panama. His letters from California to The Tribune had created renewed interest in that wonderful portion of our republic, but after his return he wrote still another, which was an unanswerable summing up of the arguments in behalf of a Pacific Railroad. The letter concluded : " Men and brethren! let us resolve to have a railroad to the Pacific to have it soon. It will add more to the strength and wealth of our country than would the aquisition of a dozen Cubas. It will prove a bond of union not easily broken, and a new spring to our national industry, prosperity, and wealth. It will call new manufactures into existence, and increase the demand for the products of those already existing. It will open new vistas to national and to individual aspiration, and crush out filibusterism by giving a new r and wholesome direction to the public mind. My long, fatiguing journey was undertaken in the hope that I might do something toward the early construction of the Pacific Railroad ; and I trust that it has not been made whollv in vain." Had Mr. Greeley not visited California, the Pacific Eailroad would have been built; not, indeed, so soon as it was. Per haps he would have been gathered to his fathers before the success of the enterprise; but sooner or later its success was inevitable. He hastened its construction by many years. This is the praise to which he is entitled in this regard; no more, no less. It is precisely the same with every reformer. He anticipates great events, hastens them, does not create them. This latter is the work of God and the people. Mr. Greeley had about rested from his journey ings when an vent occurred which aroused the nation. This was the capture of Harper s Ferry, Virginia, by John Brown, aided by a few 336 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. men and pikes. The incident has been related with historic fulness and need not be here enlarged upon. Mr. Greeley was among those who were not alarmed on account of this unex pected event. He deemed the attempt of John Brown to free the slaves of Virginia ill advised and rash, but he honoured the grand old man s motives, and paid respectful deference to his intense hatred of slavery and of all injustice. Years of reflection served only to increase his admiration of the man who so rashly undertook a sublime work of emancipation, who so heroically died because of unfortunate failure; and, perhaps, the finest chapter of " The American Conflict " is the chapter upon "John Brown." To no other name among men is a chapter of that historical work devoted. CHAPTER XIX. THE QUADRILATERAL CAMPAIGN OF 1860. The Division of Parties in 18(50 Rupture of the Democratic National Convention at Charleston, South Carolina The Chicago Convention Popular Enthusiasm Mr. Greeley a Delegate from Oregon Sup ports Edward Bates for President He Defeats Mr. Seward s Nomina tion "Greeley at the Tremont, Weed at the Richmond House" Mr. Weed s Chagrin Eminent Men of the Convention: Thomas Corwin; David Wilmot: William M. Evarts; Joshua R. Giddings; Carl Schurz; John A. Andrew : Cassius M. Clay ; and others The Imbroglio Among New-York Politicians Mr. Raymond, from Auburn, Assails Mr. Greeley The Famous Letter Dissolving the Firm of " Seward, Weed and Greeley" Mr. Weed s Wisdom Two Democratic Tickets Nom inatedThe "Bell-Everett" Ticket The Candidates The Cam paign Success. THE political campaign of 1860 was remarkable on many accounts, and especially in this, that there were no less than four regularly nominated tickets before the people, each con taining candidates for President and Vice-President, and each claiming to be representative of a national organization, or of ideas which ought to be maintained by organized effort in all parts of the republic. The Democratic party, being in power, met in regular con vention of delegates at the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in the latter part of April. Events to which reference has already been made as causing a wide difference of opinion in the party upon the issue of paramount interest, reached their logical conclusion at Charleston in an open rupture. Delegates from several of the States withdrew from the convention, set up a seceding body of their own, and adjourned to meet at Richmond, Virginia, on the llth of June following. The remaining delegates, belonging mainly to the "Douglas wing" of the party, having authorized a call to the States of the seceding delegates for new delegations, adjourned to meet at Baltimore, June 18. _ 388 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEV. Shortly after this schism, and in the midst of Democratic confusion worse confounded, the National Convention of the Republicans met in an immense wigwam prepared for the pur pose in the city of Chicago. There surely never has been a party national convention held in our country amid such popular enthusiasm as that which met the delegates on their arrival at Chicago, surrounded them during their whole stay in the city, and accompanied them to their homes. The build ing of the great " wigwam " had been the subject of many telegrams and letters sent all over the country, which created a popular interest to see it. It was at the time when the grade of the city was being changed, and immense buildings were being raised several feet higher than their original founda tions. Thousands took advantage of the occasion and the temporary cheap fares to visit the city. The " outside attend ance " was simply immense. Not the Coliseum at Rome could have given standing-room to the visitors within and around the famous " wigwam," during the sessions of this conven tion. Among the delegates were many men of distinguished name, statesmen, authors, journalists, politicians, but un questionably the observed of all observers was Horace G-reeley. He was a delegate from Oregon. Not in popular favour, but in political importance and ceaseless activity, the man who stood next to Mr. Greeley in this great gathering of repre sentative men was Thurlow Weed. It did not take the curious long to discover that Mr. Greeley was at the Tremont House, Mr. Weed at the Richmond. Indeed, there were placards con spicuously posted saying: "-Greeley at the Tremont, Weed at the Richmond House." From those headquarters emanated the finest strategy and grandest contest ever witnessed on any American theatre of political war. Mr. Greeley was for the nomination of Edward Bates, of Missouri, subsequently Attorney-General of the United States. He afterwards stated his reasons for this preference in these words: " My choice was Edward Bates, of St. Louis. He had been sole Repre sentative of Missouri in Congress fully thirty years before, when he had DR. CHARLES H. RAT. 339 heartily supported the administration of John Quincy Adams. He had since been mainly in retirement, save that he had presided with eminent ability over the River and Harbour Convention held at Chicago in 1847, and had held a local judgeship. Born in Virginia, a lite-long slaveholder, in politics a Whig, he was thoroughly conservative, and so held fast to the doctrine of our Revolutionary sages, that Slavery was an evil to be restricted, not a good to be diffused. This conviction made him essen tially a Republican ; while I believed that he could poll votes in every Slave State, and, if elected, rally all that was left of the Whig party therein to resist Secession and Rebellion. If not the only Republican whose elec tion would not suffice as a pretext for civil war, he seemed to me that one most likely to repress the threatened insurrection, or, at the worst to crush it. I did not hesitate to avow my preference, though I may have withheld some of my reasons for it." Mr. Seward was the strongest candidate at the beginning, and many believed he would be nominated on the first ballot. But Abraham Lincoln had many friends among the delegates. They were enthusiastic, straight-forward, aggressive, and mi- purchasable. They were sustained by an immense, omnipres ent outside pressure, and powerfully strengthened by The Chicago Tribune, then and since one of the strongest journals in the republic, at this time edited by Dr. Charles H. Ray, the ablest and most accomplished journalist of the West, with whom was associated Mr. Joseph Medill, since the distin guished reformer of the law of elections, and Mayor of Chi cago. Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, had considerable strength, and Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, received the support of not quite the whole delegation from his State, and had a very few friends from other States. These, with Judge Bates, .Fudge McLean, and others, had a majority of the delegates. There was not the remotest possibility of nominating Judge Bates. But Mr. Greeley clung to him with unyielding pertinacity. He visited, by invitation, a number of State delegations, addressing them in behalf of his favourite. Those addresses were marvels of diplomacy and political sagacity. No unkind word toward Mr. Seward escaped him; many sentences of praise of that statesman fell from his lips. Nevertheless, he was killing Seward all the time, and with the only means which it was possible effectively to use. 1 Recollections or a Busy Life, p. 389. 340 LITE OF HORACE GREELEY. Had Mr. Greelej wavered for aii instant in his support of Mr. Bates, or been goaded into the expression of any ill opin ion of Mr. Seward, Mr. Lincoln, or the other candidates, Mr. Weed would have won the game. He gave hope and encour agement to all, and it was impossible for Mr. Weed to bring about any desertions. Weed remained nearly all the time in hi& own rooms, but knowing everything that was going on in every delegation in the city. His devoted friends, the devoted friends of Mr. Seward, used every argument, resorted to every means, to bring about their desired result. On the night before the ballot, they had a grand " Seward demonstration, "- processions with banners, music, torch-lights; addresses; all possible appliances to overcome the tremendous outside pres sure and " the influence of The Chicago Tribune " for Mr. Lincoln. Right here, perhaps, was where Mr. Greeley manifested his greatest power and skill in political management. The demon stration had been gotten up. utterly " regardless of expense. New-York merchants contributed with princely liberality, and were generously seconded by the Seward delegates and their friends in the Garden City. It was an imposing aifair; a magnificent demonstration. It was imposing in more respects than one. It imposed upon the Seward men. They were fairly wild with excitement. It was, perhaps, the only time in his life when Thurlow Weed was greatly deceived. There was a world of reality in this splendid display, this sublime outpour ing ol enthusiasm. There was also a world of sham in it. Dr. Ray, who was never deceived by any sham, great or small, privately pooh-poohed it. "Why," said he, "Chicago can get up that sort of thing any time with five thousand dollars sub scribed." While the Seward men were demonstrating, the Lincoln men especially were hard at work, and went to bed rather late the next morning those who went to bed at all confident of success; but willing, indeed anxious, to have Mr. Weed and his advisers, errand- and minute-men suppose that Mr. Seward would now go through with a rush. Col. Webb and Mr. Raymond telegraphed to their respective journals the sure success of Mr. Seward. And Horace Greeley did like- ME. GREELEY AT CHICAGO. 341 wise! When a Seward man of prominence proposed to Mr. Greeley to suggest a person who would be satisfactory to him for Vice-President, he said, " O, never mind ; fix up the whole ticket to suit yourselves." It is highly probable that Mr. Weed would have succeeded in procuring the nomination of his friend but for the mistaken estimate of his strength formed upon the great demonstration of this beautiful Thursday night. It seems hardly possible that Mr. Greeley, in constant and confidential intercourse with Western men who estimated the whole thing at its proper worth, could have been for a moment deceived by it. If Thurlow Weed had not met his match in Horace Greeley, he had met it in Horace Greeley, backed by the best minds, the most skilful politicians, and the most powerful and dauntless public journal, of the Northwest. 2 The result is well remembered by all. Mr. Seward failed by sixty votes to receive a majority on the first ballot, and after that there was not a shadow of a chance for him. Abraham Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot amid a scene of enthusiastic excitement which a similar event has never pro duced before or since. The vast wigwam, packed with men and women, might almost have had its roof blown up by the concussion of the cheers. The thousands outside, nearly all Lincoln men, were frantic with joy. Cannons were fired from the neighbourhood, the very smoke of which penetrated the wigwam, and brought out more cheers. It was a long time before order could be restored; not, in fact, it might seem, until the very throats of the people could for the time being be used no more. " I think I am not mistaken in thus representing Mr. Greeley as allow ing Mr. Weed to deceive himself, and most adroitly helping him in that behalf. I was present in the Convention sitting near Col. Webb, of The Courier and Enquirer during all of its sittings, and at the Tremont House, the rest of the time. I was in constant communication with Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, Governor Kirkwood, of Iowa, and other strong friends of Lincoln in the West. When, on the night of the demonstration, Col. Webb sent word to his paper that Mr. Seward would be nominated, I sent word to the country journal for which I was corresponding that Mr. Lin coln would be nominated. Horace Greeley knew more than I did. But if I had been he, I should have said " it looks like the game is up " too. Thus the Seward men quit work too soon. 342 LIFE OF HORACE OKEKLKY. It is creditable to Mr. Weed to say that he lelt deeply pained and chagrinned at the defeat of Mr. Seward. It was said at the time that when the result was announced to him at his apartments he was observed to shed tears. Whether this be so or not, it is certain that his long, ever faithful devotion to Mr. Seward must be regarded as making a beautiful relief in the almost universal selfishness of our politicians careers. Nor is it unreasonable to conclude that he who inspired such friendship on the part of a mind so acute, so observant, so comprehensive, must have been possessed of much more than usual personal nobility of character as well as genuine great ness. Mr. Greeley met at the Chicago Convention many men of distinguished reputation then and since. Thomas Corwin was there, aged indeed, and in feeble health, but with mind as clear and strong as when he spoke as rarely man has spoken " for Tippecanoe and Tyler too." David Wilmot, the author of the famous anti-slavery proviso, was temporary chairman of the Convention. William M. Evarts, since greatly celebrated, here first won national renown. He was a devoted friend of Mr. Seward, and chairman ol the New York delegation. His speech, on seconding the motion to make the nomination of Mr. Lincoln unanimous, was surpassingly eloquent. With touching, manly, dignified words, he announced his own sorrow and that of the delegates of the great State of New York, over the defeat of their beloved statesman, and then with a discriminating yet generous eulogium upon Mr. Lincoln, and with a courtesy scarcely less than sublime, seconded, in the name of New York, the motion of unanimous nomination. Here, too, was the venerable Joshua K. Giddings, whose long anti-slavery record had made him a general favourite, so that he could not appear on the stage without being greeted with a storm of applause. Carl Schurz, our most eloquent philosophical orator, laboured earnestly and well for Mr. Seward, but yielded to defeat with abundant magnanimity. His speech in seconding the motion to make the nomination unanimous, was surpassed only by that of Mr. Evarts, if surpassed at all. The Hon John A. Andrew, of Massachusetts, made a most favourable impression " SE WARD, WEED, AKD GREELET." 343 in the Convention and upon Western people, which was more than borne out by his subsequent usefulness and eminence in the old Bay State. Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, was a dele gate, but being named as a candidate for Vice-President, did not attend the sittings of the Convention. Henry S. Lane, of Indiana, who had presided at Philadelphia four years before, was now a delegate, labouring night and day for Mr. Lincoln s nomination. He was powerfully aided by Caleb B. Smith, afterwards Secretary of the Interior, always an eloquent speaker, with a lisp rather pleasant than otherwise. O. H. Browning, of Illinois, also afterwards Secretary of the Interior, stood at the head of the Illinois delegation, and, overwhelmed by feel ings of gratification, made the only poor speech of his life in acknowledgement of Mr. Lincoln s nomination. Montgomery Blair, subsequently Postmaster G-eneral, was a quiet but influ ential member ot the Convention. Among these and other magnates of the Republican party, delegates to the Convention or lookers-on in Venice, Mr. Greeley was preeminent in influ ence and popularity. It was conceded that he had defeated Mr. Seward s nomination. Indeed this fact led to a controversy, which caused much comment, and brought out the publication of the famous letter from Mr. Greeley to Mr. Seward, by which the former gave notice of his retirement from the firm of "Seward, Weed and Greeley/ Col. Webb, of the Courier and Enquirer, and Mr. Raymond of The ]N"ew-York Times, were unable to preserve that serene composure in defeat which more surely than almost anything else characterizes greatness of soul. Any one should be able to stand a victory; but a great man will manifest no unseemly agitation in the midst of even the most unexpected disaster. Profoundly sorrowful he may be, ought to be, for the misfortunes of a friend; never spiteful that he has been worsted in a conflict where no wrong means were used to bring victory to the opposing side. After the convention, Mr. Raymond and Col. Webb kept up . newspaper war on Mr. Greeley, attributing to him gross duplicity at Chicago. Visiting Mr. Seward at his home in Auburn, soon after the convention, Mr. Raymond thence wrote 344 LIFE OF HOliACE GKKELEV. a letter to The Times, in which lie acknowledged that Mr. Greeley had been the means of defeating Mr. Seward, and attributed to him unworthy motives. The more important portions of this letter follow: " I observe that to-day s Tribune contains a long personal explanation from Mr. Greeley of the part which he took in the action of the Chicago Convention. It is never easy for a public man to be the historian of his own exploits. If he be a vain man, he will exaggerate his personal influence ; if he be an over-modest one, he will underrate it. It is scarcely necessary to say that Mr. Greeley has fallen into the latter mistake. With the gene rosity which belongs to his nature, and which a feeling not unlike remorse may have stimulated into unwonted activity, he awards to others the credit which belongs transcendently to himself. The main work of the Chicago Convention was the defeat of Governor Seward; that was the only specific and distinct object towards which its conscious efforts were directed. The great point aimed at was Mr. Seward s defeat ; and in that endeavour Mr. Greeley laboured harder, and did ten-fold more, than the whole family of Blairs, together with all the gubernatorial candidates, to whom he modestly hands over the honours of the effective campaign. He had special qualifications, as well as a special love for the task, to which none of the others could lay any claim. For twenty years he had been sustaining the political principles and vindicating the political conduct of Mr. Seward, through the columns of the most influential political newspaper in the country. He had infused into the popular mind, espe cially throughout the Western States, the most profound and thorough devotion to the anti-slavery sentiments which had given character to Mr. Seward s public career; he had vindicated his opinions upon naturaliza tion and upon the organization of the Know-Nothing party from the assaults made upon them ; he had urged his reelection to the Senate in the face of all the sentiments which had made him obnoxious to a portion of his constituents ; he had gone far beyond him in expression of hostility to slavery, in palliation of armed attempts for its overthrow, and in assaults upon that clause of the Constitution which requires the surrender of fugitive slaves: and he was known to have been for more than twenty years his personal friend and political supporter. These things gave him a hold upon the Republican sentiment of the country, and a weight of authority in everything relating to Governor Seward to which neither old Blair of the Globe, as Mr. Greeley styles him, nor both his sons, could for a moment lay claim. His voice was potential precisely where Governor Seward was strongest, because it was supposed to be that of a friend, strong in his personal attachment and devotion, and driven into opposi tion on this occasion solely by the despairing conviction that the welfare of the country and the triumph of the Republican cause demanded the sacrifice. He laboured personally with the delegates as they arrived, commending himself always to their confidence by professions of regard MR. RAYMOND S ATTACK. 345 and the most zealous friendship for Governor Seward, but presenting defeat, even in New York, as the inevitable result of his nomination. " Mr. Greeley was largely indebted to the forbearance of those upon whom he was waging this warfare for the means of making it effectual. While it was known to some of them that, nearly six years ago in November, 1854 he had privately, but distinctly, repudiated all further political friendship for and alliance with Governor Seward, and menaced him with his hostility whenever it could be made most effective, for the avowed reason that Governor Seward had never aided or advised his elevation to office; that he had never recognized his claim to such official promotion, but had tolerated the elevation of men known to be obnoxious to him, and who had rendered far less service to the party than he had done, no use was made of this knowledge in quarters where it would have disarmed the deadly effect of his pretended friendship for the man upon whom he was thus deliberately wreaking the long-hoarded revenge of a disappointed office-seeker. He was still allowed to represent to the delegates from Vermont, New Hampshire, Ohio, Indiana, and other States known to be in favour of Governor Seward s nomination, that, while he desired it upon the strongest grounds of personal and political friendship, he believed it would be fatal to the success of the cause. Being thus stimulated by a hatred he had secretly cherished for years, protected by the forbearance of those whom he assailed, and strong in the confidence of those upon whom he sought to operate it is not strange that Mr. Greeley s efforts should have been crowned with success. But it is per fectly safe to say that no other man certainly no one occupying a position less favourable for such an assault could possibly have accomplished that result. "We deem it only just to Mr. Greeley thus early to award him the full credit for the main result of the Chicago Convention, because his own modesty will prevent his claiming it, at all events until the new Republi can administration shall be in position to distribute its awards. It is not right that merit so conspicuous should remain so long in the shade. Even the most transcendent services are in danger of being forgotten, in the tumult and confusion of a contested election ; and we cheerfully tender, for Mr. Greeley s use, this record of his deserts, when he may claim at the hands of his new associates that payment for lack of which he has deserted and betrayed his old ones." The assertion made in Mr. Raymond s letter that Mr. Greeley was a disappointed office-seeker, wreaking at Chicago long- hoarded revenge on Mr. Seward, was echoed and reechoed by many journals, and believed by large numbers of persons. The principal proof of Mr. Greeley s hostility to Mr. Seward was said to lie in a letter of the former, written in 1854. The 34:6 JJKE OB IIOKACK publication of tliat letter Mr. Greeley demanded from day to day in The Tribune, and it being at last produced, was pub lished. It is as follows: "NEW- YORK, Saturday eve., Nov. 11, 1854. "GOVERNOR SEWARD: The election is over, and its results sufficiently ascertained. It seems to me a fitting time to announce to you the dissolu tion of the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, by the withdrawal of the junior partner, said withdrawal to take effect on the morning after the first Tuesday in February next. And, as it may seem a great pre sumption in me to assume that any such firm exists, especially since the public was advised, rather more than a year ago, by an editorial rescript in The Evening Journal, formally reading me out of the Whig party, that I was esteemed no longer either useful or ornamental in the concern, you will, I am sure, indulge me in some reminiscences which seem to befit the occasion. "I was a poor young printer and editor of a literary journal, a very active and bitter Whig in a small way, but not seeking to be known out of my own ward committee, when, after the great political revulsion of 1837, I was one day called to the City Hotel, where two strangers intro duced themselves as Thurlow Weed and Lewis Benedict of Albany. They told me that a cheap campaign paper of a peculiar stamp at Albany had been resolved on, and that I had been selected to edit it. The announce ment might well be deemed flattering by one who had never even sought the notice of the great, and who was not known as a partisan writer, and I eagerly embraced their proposals. They asked me to fix my salary for the year ; I named $1,000, which they agreed to ; and I did the work required to the best of my ability. It was work that made no figure and created no sensation ; but I loved it, and I did it well. When it was done, you were Governor, dispensing offices worth $3,000 to $20,000 per year to your friends and compatriots, and I returned to my garret and my crust, and my des perate battle with pecuniary obligations heaped upon me by bad partners in business and the disastrous events of 1837. I believe that it did not then occur to me that some one of these abundant places might have been offered to me without injustice; I now think it should have occurred to you. If it did occur to me, I was not the man to ask you for it ; I think that should not have been necessary. I only remember that no friend at Albany inquired as to my pecuniary circumstances, that your friend (but not mine) Robert C. Wetmore was one of the chief dispensers of your pat ronage here; and that such devoted compatriots as A. H. Wells and John Hooks were lifted by you out of pauperism into independence, as I am glad I was not ; and yet an inquiry from you as to my needs and means at that time would have been timely, and held ever in grateful remembrance. " In the Harrison campaign of 1840 I was again designated to edit a "SEWAKD, WEED, AXD GKEKLEY." 347 campaign paper. I published it as well, and ought to have made some thing by it, in spite of its extremely low price ; my extreme poverty was the main reason why I did not. It compelled me to hire press-work, mailing, etc., done by the job, and high charges for extra work nearly ate me up. At the close, I was still without property and in debt, but this paper had rather improved my position. " Now came the great scramble of the swell mob of coon minstrels and cider-suckers at Washington, I not being counted in. Several regiments of them went on from this city ; but no one of the whole crowd, though I say it who should not, had done so much toward General Harrison s nom. ination and election as yours respectfully. I asked nothing, expected nothing; but you, Governor Seward, ought to have asked that I be post master of New- York. Your asking would have been in vain ; but it would have been an act of grace neither wasted nor undeserved. "I soon after started The Tribune, because I was urged to do so by cer tain of your friends, and because such a paper was needed here. I was promised certain pecuniary aid in so doing; it might have been given me without cost or risk to any one. All I ever had was a loan by piecemeal of $1,000 from James Coggeshall, God bless his honoured memory! I did not ask for this, and I think it is the one sole case in which I ever received a pecuniary favour from a political associate. I am very thankful that he did not die till it was fully repaid. "And let me here honour one grateful recollection. When the Whig party under your rule had offices to give my name was never thought of; but when, in 1842-43, we were hopelessly out of power, I was honoured with the party nomination for State Printer. When we came again to have a State Printer to elect as well as nominate, the place went to Weed, as it ought. Yet it is worth something to know that there was once a time when it was not deemed too great a sacrifice to recognize me as belonging to your house hold. If a new office had not since been created on purpose to give its valuable patronage to H. J. Raymond and enable St. John to show forth his Times as the organ of the Whig State Administration, I should have been still more grateful. " In 1848 your star again rose, and my warmest hopes were realized in your election to the Senate. I was no longer needy, and had no more claim than desire to be recognized by General Taylor. I think I had some claim to forbearance from you. What I received thereupon was a most humil iating lecture in the shape of a decision in the libel case of Redfield and Pringle, and an obligation to publish it in my own and the other journal of our supposed firm. I thought and still think this lecture needlessly cruel and mortifying. The plaintiffs, after using my columns to the ex tent of their needs or desires, stopped writing, and called on me for the name of their assailant. I proffered it to them, a thoroughly responsible name. They refused to accept it, unless it should prove to be one of the four or five first men in Batavia ! when they had known from the first who it was, and that it was neither of them. They would not accept that which they had demanded ; they sued me instead for money, and money you were LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. at liberty to give them to your heart s content. I do not think you were at liberty to humiliate me in the eyes of my own and your 3 public as you did. I think you exalted your own judicial sternness and fearlessness unduly at my expense. I think you had a better occasion for the display of these qualities, when Webb threw himself untimely upon you for a par don which he had done all a man could do to demerit. (His paper is paying you for it now.) " I have publicly set forth my view of your and our duty with respect to fusion, Nebraska, and party designations. I will not repeat any of that. I have referred also to Weed s reading me out of the Whig party, my crime being, in this as in some other things, that of doing to-day what more politic persons will not be ready to do till to-morrow. " Let me speak of the late canvass. I was once sent to Congress for ninety days, merely to enable Jim Brooks to secure a seat therein for four years. I think I never hinted to any human being that I would have liked to be put forward for any place. But James W. White (you hardly know how good and true a man he is) started my name for Congress, and Brooks s packed delegation thought I could help him through ; so I was put on behind him. But this last spring, after the Nebraska question had created a new state of things at the North, one or two personal friends, of no po litical consideration, suggested my name as a candidate for Governor, and I did not discourage them. Soon, the persons who were afterward mainry instrumental in nominating Clark came about me, and asked if I could secure the Know-Nothing vote. I told them I neither could nor would touch it; on the contrary, I loathed and repelled it. Thereupon they turned upon Clark. " I said nothing, did nothing. A hundred people asked me who should be run for Governor. I sometimes indicated Patterson; I never hinted at my own name. But by and by Weed came down and called me to him, to tell me why he could not support me for Governor. (I had never asked nor counted on his support.) " I am sure Weed did not mean to humiliate me; but he did it. The upshot of his discourse (very cautiously stated) was this: If I were a candidate for Governor, I should beat, not myself only, but 3^011. Perhaps that was true. But as I had in no manner solicited his or your support, T thought this might have been said CO my friends rather than to me. I sus pect it is true that I could not have been elected Governor as a Whig. But had he and you been favourable, there would have been a party in the State ere this which could and would have elected me to any post, without injur ing itself or endangering your re-election. "It was in vain that I urged that I had in no manner asked a nomination. At length I was nettled by his language well intended, but very cutting as addressed by him to me to say, in substance, Well, then, make Patterson Governor, and try my name for Lieutenant. To lose this place 3 "If I am not mistaken, this judgment is the only speech, letter, or document addressed to the public in which you ever recognized my exist ence. I hope I may not go down to posterity as embalmed therein." "SEWAKD, WEED, AND GEEELEY. is a matter of no importance ; and we can see whether I am really so odious. " I should have hated to serve as Lieutenant-Governor, but I should have gloried in running for the post. I want to have my enemies all upon me at once; I am tired of fighting them piecemeal. And, though I should have been beaten in the canvass, I know that my running would have helped the ticket, and helped my paper. " It was thought best to let the matter take another course. No other iiame could have been put on the ticket so bitterly humbling to me as that which was selected. The nomination was given to Raymond ; the fight left to me. And, Governor Seward, / have made it, though it be conceited in me to say so. What little fight there has been I have stirred up. Even Weed has not been (I speak of his paper) hearty in this contest, while the journal of the Whig Lieutenaut-Governor has taken care of its own inter ests and let the canvass take care of itself, as it early declared it would do. That journal has (because of its milk-and-water course) some twenty thou sand subscribers in this city and its suburbs, and, of these twenty thousand, I venture to say more voted for Ullmann and Scroggs than for Clark and Raymond; The Tribune (also because of its character) has but eight thousand subscribes within the same radius, and I venture to say that of its habitual readers nine-tenths voted for Clark and Raymond, very few for Ullmann and Scroggs. I had to bear the brunt of the contest, and take a terrible responsibility in order to prevent the Whigs uniting upon James W. Barker in order to defeat Fernando Wood. Had Barker been elected here, neither you nor I could walk these streets without being hooted, and Know-Xothingism would have swept like a prairie-fire. I stopped Barker s election at the cost of incurring the deadliest enmity of the defeated gang; and I have been rebuked for it by the Lieutenant-Governor s paper. A; the critical moment, he came out against John Wheeler in favour of Charle? H. Marshall (who would have been your deadliest enemy in the House), and even your Colonel General s paper, which was even with me in insist ing that Wheeler should be returned, wheeled about at the last moment and went in for Marshall. The Tribune alone clinging to Wheeler till the last. I rejoice that they who turned so suddenly were not able to turn all their readers. "Governor Seward, I know that some of your most cherished friends think me a great obstacle to your advancement; that John Schoolcraft, for one, insists that you and Weed shall not be identified with me. I trust, after a time, you will not be. I trust I shall never be found in opposition to you ; I have no further wish but to glide out of the newspaper world as quietly and as speedily as possible, join my family in Europe, and if pos sible stay there quite a time, long enough to cool my fevered brain and renovate my overtasked energies. All I ask is that we shall be counted even on the morning after the first Tuesday in February, as aforesaid, and that I may thereafter take such course as seems best without reference to the past. "You have done me acts of valued kindness in the line of your profes- 350 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. sion : let me close with the assurance that these will ever be gratefully remembered by Yours, "HOKACE GREELEY. " HON. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, present." Mr. Greeley s comments upon the publication of this letter were manly and independent. "The moral I would incul cate," said he, " is a trite one but none the less important. Tt is summed up in the Scriptural injunction Put not your trust in princes. Men, even the best, are frail and mutable, while principle is sure and eternal. Be no man s man, but Truth s and your country s. You will be sorely tempted at times to take this or that great man for your oracle and guide, it is easy and tempting to lean, to follow, and trust, but it is safer and wiser to look ever through your own eyes, to tread your own path, to trust implicitly in God alone. The atmosphere is a little warmer inside some great man s castle, but the free air of heaven is ever so much purer and more bracing. My active political life may be said to have begun with Governor Sewai d s appearance on the broader stage; for I edited my first political sheet (The Constitution) in 1834, when he was first a candidate for Governor, and I very ardently laboured in 1854 to secure his re-election to the Senate. Thenceforward I have had no idol, but have acted without personal bias as the highest public good has from time to time seemed to me to demand. I have differed frankly with Gover nor Seward on some financial points; but I think have uttered more praise with less blame of him than of any other living statesman. And if ever in my life I discharged a public duty in utter disregard of personal considerations, I did so at Chi cago last month. I was no longer a devotee of Governor Seward; but I was equally independent of all others; and if I had been swayed by feeling alone, I should have, for many reasons, preferred him to any of his competitors. Our per sonal intercourse, as well since as before my letter herewith published, had always been frank and kindly, and I was never insensible to his many good and some great qualities, both of head and heart. But I did not and do not believe it advisable that he should be the Republican candidate for President; and "SEWARD, WEED, AND GKEKLEY." 351 I acted in full accordance with my deliberate convictions. Need I add. that each subsequent day s developments have tended to strengthen my confidence that what I did was not only well meant, but well done?" Mr. "Weed had a long, excellent article on the subject in The Evening Journal, which concluded as follows: " One word in relation to the supposed political firm. Mr. Greeley brought into it his full quota of capital. But were there no beneficial results, no accruing advantages, to himself? Did he not attain, in the six teen years, a high position, a world-wide reputation, and an ample for tune ? Admit, as we do, that he (Mr. Greeley) is not as wealthy as we wish he was, it is not because The Tribune has not made his fortune, but because he did not keep it, because it went, as other people s money goes, to friends, to pay indorsements, and in bad investments. " We have both been liberally, nay, generously sustained by our party. Mr. Greeley differs with us in regarding patrons of newspapers as con ferring favours. In giving them the worth of their money, he holds that the account is balanced. We, on the other hand, have ever held the rela tion of newspaper editor and subscriber as one of fraternity. Viewed in this aspect, the editors of The Tribune and Evening Journal have manifold reasons for cherishing grateful recollections of the liberal and abiding confidence and patronage of their party and friends. " In conclusion, we cannot withhold an expression of sincere regret that this letter has been called out. Having remained six years in blissful ignorance of its contents, we should much preferred to have ever remained so. It jars harshly upon cherished memories. It destroys ideals of dis interestedness and generosity which relieved political life from so much that is selfish, sordid, and rapacious." It is very evident that Mr. Weed had nothing to do with fishing out this letter from Mr. Seward, and we may safely conclude from the reluctance with which he gave it up, that he regretted if he did not condemn the public use which had been made of a paper evidently intended for his eye alone. It is only necessary to add that the public press of the poli tical party to which Mr. Greeley belonged very generally spoke in favourable terms of his letter, and in approbation of the course he had pursued at Chicago. The heated partisans of Mr. Seward were unfortunate, rather than really blame worthy. They failed fully to understand that one may be a sincere friend to another and yet have opinions of his own. It was impossible for Horace Greeley to become a toady, or a 352 LIFE OF HORACT GREELEY. mere tail to any kite. He never was so wholly devoted to Mr. Seward as he was to Henry Clay; and he did not labour more zealously to defeat Mr. Seward at Chicago, in 1860, than he had done to defeat Mr. Clay s nomination at Harrisburgh in 1839. In this instance, he was potentially aided by Mr. Weed, who was no less friendly to Clay than he. In the case of Clay, there was a mutual understanding; in that of Seward, a mutual misunderstanding. Hence crimination and recrimin ation; estrangement; something of error on either side; nothing, so far as the old firm of " Seward, Weed, and Greeley " is concerned, which should not be forever contemplated more in sorrow than in anger. Let us now return to the scene whence originated the pub lic discussion of misunderstandings which, but for too prying a curiosity, and too generous, confiding a nature, would have been allowed to repose in the quiet of personal confidence. The convention nominated Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine,, its candidate for Vice-President Before the nominations, how ever, the platform had been adopted, amid great enthusiasm and with perfect unanimity. Of the committee preparing this declaration of principles, Mr. Greeley was a most laborious member. It is quite generally conceded that it was a model of this kind of composition, being not only wise in statement of dogmas, but terse, strong, and polished in expression. For this Mr. Greeley is doubtless entitled to no little credit, but he awarded special praise herein to Mr. John A. Kasson, of Iowa, afterwards First Assistant Postmaster General, and sub sequently a Representative in Congress. It is a curious fact showing the adroitness with which one portion of the platform was framed, that Mr. Greeley sustained it from the standpoint of " Protection " no less heartily than Mr. Bryant sustained it as a Free-Trader. Thus with a popular ticket and a popular platform,- both to great extent due to the influence and labours of Horace Greeley, the party destined to secure success, entered upon the active operations of the campaign. The signs of the times did not indicate that it would be a year of jubilee for the Democ racy. Their two conventions met, according to adjournment, SENATOR DOUGLAS. 353 one at Baltimore, the other at Richmond, the latter soon adjourning to Baltimore. The disagreements were irrecon cilable, and each body put forth a ticket and announced a platform. By those whom it will be thought proper to call " the regulars," Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, was nominated for the Presidency, and Senator Benjamin Fitzpat- rick for the Y ice-Presidency. The latter declining, the Hon. Herschel Y. Johnson, of Georgia, was substituted in his place. The seceders nominated the Hon. John C. Breckinridge, then Yice-Presideut of the United States, for President, and Hon. Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for Yice-President. Meantime, a convention of the " American" party, so called, lucm a non lucendo^ because there was nothing in it especially entitled to be styled American, had been held in Baltimore, May 19, which had nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, for President, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for Yice- President. These delegates now adopted the name of the " Constitutional Union " party, and expressly declared that it was the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no polit ical principle other than the Constitution, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws. This party improved on the ancient adage, and in its intense conservatism, demanded that we must let dead enough alone, and not even bury it out of sight, All of the candidates for President were men of ability and character. Mr. Lincoln, as we have seen, had recently won national renown by his powerful debates with Judge Douglas, many speeches in Illinois, and profoundly thoughtful addresses in other States. Mr. Douglas was wonderfully popular with the Democratic masses of the North. Like Mr. Lincoln, he had long struggled to win position and fame by virtue of his talents and energies alone; and, in the party of the majority in his State, had greatly succeeded. He was both a great debater and a great organizer. No public man was -ever more faithful to his friends; none ever had more devoted adherents. It is probably true that no American statesman, unless it be Andrew Jackson himself, ever had such hosts of friends not only ready but anxious to fight for him, as Stephen A. Doug- 23 354 I.IFK OF HORACE GRKKI.KY. las. His personal magnetism was unequalled. Judge Douglas was short in stature, though most compactly built; so that he was as strong physically as he was powerful in debate. Hence his sobriquet of " The Little Giant " was unusually appro priate. He seemed to stand so firmly on his feet that it would be impossible to uptrip him. Mr. Breckinridge was a gentleman of brilliant parts, and one of the most pleasing of public speakers. Genial, warm-hearted, he too had vast numbers of devoted adherents in the South, and was correctly esteemed in the country generally as among the most creditable representatives of those who were said to form "the Southern chivalry." Mr. Bell was a statesman of many years experience in public life, was justly entitled to the general respect, but in this campaign occupied a negative, unaggressive position. He afterwards quailed before the threatening attitude of the South against the Union, and, in Horace Greeley s opin ion, became entitled to severer condemnation than Jefferson Davis himself. In this opinion history will probably concur, relating with indignant sadness the melancholy end of a life which, but for its late mistakes, might have been placed among those by which the republic had been blessed and saved. Of the candidates for Yice-President, Mr. Everett was the only one of illustrious name. A statesman of the old school, he had dropped behind his age, but not without having added renown to his country s statesmanship and diplomacy, and greatly extended the influence and good report of American literature. Mr. Hamlin, the candidate of the Republicans, had not been greatly distinguished* but at the time of his nomina tion was a respected member of the Senate. He had left the .Democratic party in 1856, in a speech in the Senate of remarka ble power and eloquence, which received all the more praise from the public because it was the first and last great speech in that chamber by him. He came near being called u Single Speech Hamlin." in imitation of a similar thing in the history of an English politician. Mr. Johnson, associated on the ticket with Mr. Douglas, was a man of respectable talents and excellent character; a little too eruptive, per- THE ELECTION OF 1860. 355 haps, of " Southern fire," but without much unfortunate record. Mr. Lane was an "intense pro-slavery Democrat;" a man who had had greatness thrust upon him; was wonder fully ignorant; and was even charged with writing the name of Deity with a little g. Such dead-wood frequently drifts into the stream of politics; and whence it cometh or whither it goeth no man can tell. The campaign was exceedingly animated, on the part of the Republicans, from the moment of Mr. Lincoln s nomination. As with General Harrison, there appeared to be something in his homely life and character to bring out the affections and enthusiasm of the people. The nominations at Baltimore but increased the excitement. Senator Douglas soon in person went upon the hustings, and, addressing vast concourses of people, aroused the enthusiasm of his friends to the highest pitch. It was certainly the liveliest presidential campaign in the history of our country, excepting only that of 1840. Com panies of " Wide- Awakes " were formed by Republicans in every neighbourhood, followed by " Hickory-shirt Boys " on the part of the Douglasites in many portions of the North. It was astonishing, too, how much noise the " Bell-Everettites " made even in communities where they were outvoted ten, twenty, fifty, or even a hundred to one. All the orators and all the journals of each party undoubt edly did their best. Speak as they might, write as men might on other topics, the issue of the campaign was the question of Human Slavery. It was a dread issue, in which might be involved appalling results, but it was ably, conscientiously, and bravely met. This year The New- York Tribune fairly surpassed itself. Mr. Greeley had been assailed, as w r e have seen, by men in high standing in his own party at the very inception of the campaign. This appears to have aroused his ambition and energies to their best endeavour; and it is certain that The Tribune in all its editions was one of the most poten tial means in bringing about the result. In the election Mr. Lincoln carried every free State except New Jersey, and even a . portion of the electoral vote of that State. Next in popular strength was Mr. Douglas, then Mr. 356 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Brecldnridge, and lowest of all Mr. Bell. But IE electoral votes Mr. Douglas had only 12, Mr. Bell receiving 39, Mr. Breckinridge 72, and Mr. Lincoln 180. The great success of the candidates and principles which Horace Greeley had been so largely instrumental in placing before the people, was forthwith tortured into the inauguration of opposition to the Union, resulting in that terrible civil war of which he became the most impartial historian who has yet narrated its momentous events. CHAPTEE XX. HOME LIFE. Horace Greeley at Home An Unpretending Household Margaret Ful ler s Description of Mr. Greeley s Home His Personal Habits Toilet Food His Hospitality Tenderness for His Children The Death of "Pickie" His Taste as to Home Adornments Buys a Farm. ONE of the apparently necessary results of journalism is that it leaves little time to the editor for social or home enjoy ments. This is especially the case where the journal is a daily paper. For, no matter what happens, the paper must come out. It can stop neither on account of joy, or misery, or sick ness, or death, or private or public calamity. Clouds may obscure the sun, but storms must not repress the daily journal. It is our intellectual daylight, and cannot be shut out from the world. Life justly became " a demnition grind " to the accom plished Mr. Mantilini (a highly accomplished fraud, that is), of Dickens s greatest story. The life of a daily journalist is an eternal grind. The demands upon his labour and study are ceaseless. The time may come, perhaps, when more leisure shall be allowed the journalist. In that event, journalism will be the means of even greater good than it now is. Mr. Greeley, as we have seen, had been some years married before he became the founder of The ]S r ew-York Tribune. But he had commenced his unusually busy life some years before his marriage. Circumstances, already referred to, occurred soon after that event, which prevented him from securing many hours of leisure, even had he been so inclined. The latter years of The New-Yorker, it will be recollected, were years of embarrassment and the pressing weight of debt. To keep himself afloat at all almost constant toil was necessary. When Mr. Weed, in the interview which resulted in Mr. Greeley s engagement as editor of The Jeffersonian at Albany 358 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. enquired if lie had a family, Mr. Greeley replied, " I have a wife, but she keeps school, and is no hindrance to the enter prise." Both master and mistress of the family, it will be seen, were hard workers. The wife was devoted to teaching and to the acquisition of knowledge. Such a woman is often described as having " a mind of her own," the fact intended to be made known by this description being that she has opinions and ideas besides those which gurgle along in the old-time channels; channels which would be astonished out of all propriety at a storm or a freshet. It may well be supposed, therefore, that Mr. Greeley s household, in the earlier years of life in his own home, was sufficiently unpretending. Himself ever a man of the people, he never acquired luxurious tastes. He delighted, as he says himself, in bare walls and rugged fare. And the taste of Mrs. Greeley; at least for many years, was even more severe than his own, particularly as regards the matter of rugged fare. Her rigid conscientiousness upon the subject of food prevented any lavish hospitality. From the time Mr. Greeley went to New- York until after the presidential campaign of 1844, he had always lived, much of the time boarded, within half a mile of the City Hall. There was not in the whole metropolis, perhaps, a more unpretending home than that of Horace Greeley at a time when he was working harder and doing more for the Whig party than any one of his co temporaries. When the great struggle of the canvass just mentioned was over, says Mr. Greeley, " and I the worst beaten man on the continent, worn out by incessant anxiety and effort, covered with boils, and thoroughly used up, I took a long stride land ward, removing to a spacious old wooden house, built as a country or summer residence by Isaac Lawrence, formerly President of the United States Branch Bank, but which, since his death, had been neglected, and suffered to decay. It was located on eight acres of ground, including a wooded ravine, or dell, on the East Eiver, at Turtle Bay, nearly opposite the southernmost point of Blackwell s Island, amid shade and fruit trees, abundant shrubbery, ample garden, etc.; and, MB. GREELEY S HOME. 35 though now for years perforated by streets, and in good part covered by buildings, was then so secluded as to be only reached by a narrow, devious private lane, exceedingly dark at night for one accustomed to the glare of gas-lamps; the near est highway being the old Boston Road at Forty-ninth street; while an hourly stage on the Third avenue, just beyond, afforded our readiest means of transit to and from the city proper." 1 Mr. Greeley had become so accustomed to the ceaseless noises of the city, that the stillness of his new home was at lirst oppressive. It appeared to him sepulchral, unearthly, and it was some time before he could be as cheerful in his country home as in the old house down town, or the one on Broome street. It was here, in the home opposite the lower end of BlackwelFs Island, that Margaret Fuller for a long time made part of Mr. Gree ley s household. She says of it: This place is to me entirely charming; it is so completely in the country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or more from the thickly settled parts of New-York, but omnibusses and cars give me constant access to the city, and, while I can readily see what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stopping on the Harlem road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that locks in the place, and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower garden filled with shrubs, large vines and trim box borders. On both sides of the house are beautiful trees, standing fair, full- grown, and clear. Passing through a wide hall you come out upon a piazza, stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in all weathers. She thought the beauty of the place by moonlight was fairly transporting. " I enjoy it greatly," she says, "and the genius loci receives me as to a home." This place continued to be Mr. Greeley s home for some years. But he had a house in the city for a considerable period after he had bought the Chappaqua farm. Mr. Parton in his biography publishes a letter written by a Western journalist in the winter of 1853- 4, descriptive of a visit at Mr. Greeley s 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 170. 360 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. town house, which gives a clear insight into many of his intel lectual and personal habits and his home life. This writer says: " In point of pretension, Horace Greeley s house is about midway between the palaces of the Fifth Avenue and the hovels of the Five Points. It is one of a row of rather small houses, two and a half stories high, built of brick and painted brown ; the rent of which, I was told, is likely to be about seven hundred dollars a year. It was a chilly, disagreeable even ing. I went early, hoping to have a little talk with the editor before other company should arrive. I rang the bell and looked through the pane at the side of the door. The white coat was not upon its accustomed peg, and the old hat, stuffed with newspapers, was not in its usual place at the bottom of the hat-stand. Therefore I knew that the wearer of these articles was not at home, before the girl told me so ; but upon her informing me that he was expected in a few minutes, I concluded to go in and wait. The entrance-hall is exceedingly narrow, and the stairs, narrower still, begin at a few feet from the door, affording room only for the hat-stand and a chair. The carpet on the stairs and hall was common in pattern, coarse in texture. A lady the very picture of a prosperous farmer s wife, with her clean delaine dress and long, wide white apron, stood at the head of the stairs, and came down to meet me. She lighted the gas in the parlours, and then, summoned by the crying of a child up stairs, left me to my observations. " Neither I nor anybody else ever saw parlours so curiously furnished. There are three of them, and the inventory of the furniture would read thus : One small mahogany table at the head of the front parlour ; one lounge in ditto; eleven light cane-chairs in front and back parlours; one book case of carved black walnut, in the small apartment behind the back parlour ; and, except the carpets, not another article of furniture in either room. But the walls were almost covered with paintings; the mantel pieces were densely peopled with statuettes, busts, and medallions ; in a corner on a pedestal stood a beautiful copy of Powers s Proserpine in marble ; and various other works of art were disposed about the floor or leaned against the walls. Of the quality of the pictures I could not, in that light, form an opinion. The subjects of more than half of them were religious, such as, the Virgin; Peter, lovest thou me? Christ crowned with thorns; Mary, Joseph and Child; Virgin and Child; a woman pray ing before an image in a Cathedral ; Mary praying; Hermit and skull; and others. There were some books upon the table, among them a few annuals containing contributions by Horace Greeley, volumes of Burns, Byron, and Hawthorne, Downing s Rural Essays, West s complete analysis of the Holy Bible, and Ballou s Voice of Universalism. " I waited an hour. There came a double and decided ring at the bell. No one answered the summons. Another and most tremendous ring brought the servant to the door, and in a moment the face of the master of the house beamed into the room. He apologized thus : I ought to MK. GREELEY AT HOME. 361 have been here sooner, but I couldn t. He flung off his overcoat, hung it up in the hall, and, looking into the parlour, said, just let ine run up and see nay babies one minute ; I haven t seen em all day, you know ; and he sprung up the stairs two steps at a time. I heard him talk in high glee to the children in the room above for just one minute, and then he rejoined me. He began to talk something in this style: "Sit down. I have had a rough day of it, eaten nothing since break fast, just got in from my farm, been up the country lecturing, starteo from Goshen this morning at five, broke down, crossed the river on the ice, had a hard time of it, ice a good deal broken and quite dangerous, lost the cars on this side, went dogging around to hire a conveyance, got to Sing Sing, went over to my farm and transacted my business there as well as I could in the time, started for the city, and as luck would have it, they had taken off the four o clock train, didn t know that I should get down at all, harnessed up my own team, and pushed over to Sing Sing again, hadn t gone far before snap went the whiffletree, got another, though, and reached Sing Sing just two minutes before the cars came along, I ve just got in, my feet are cold, lets go to the fire. "With these words, he rose quickly and went into the back room, not to the fireplace, but to a corner near the folding-door, where hot air gushed up from a cheerless round hole in the floor. His dress, as I now observed, amply corroborated his account of the day s adventures, shirt all crum pled, cravat all awry, coat all wrinkles, stockings about his heels, and general dilapidation. " I said it was not usual at the West to go into a corner to warm one s feet; to which he replied by quoting some verses of Holmes which I did not catch. I entreated him to go to tea, as he must be hungry, but he refused pine blank. The conversation fell upon poetry. He said there was one more book he should like to make before he died, and that was a Sony-Book for the People. There was no collection of songs in existence which satisfied his idea of what a popular song-book ought to be. He would like to compile one or help do it. He said he had written verses himself, but was no poet ; and bursting into a prolonged peal of laughter, he added, that when he and Park Benjamin were editing The New-Yorker, he wrote some verses for insertion in that paper, and showed them 1o Park, and Park roared out, Thunder and lightning, Greeley, do you call tluit poetry ? Speaking of a certain well-known versifier, he said : He s a good fellow enough, but he can t write poetry, and if had remained in Boston, he would have killed him, he takes criticism so hard. As for me I like a little opposition, I enjoy it, I can t understand the feelings of those thin-skinned people. " I said I had been looking to see what books he preferred should lie on his table. I don t prefer, he said ; I read no books. I have been trying for years to get a chance to read Wilhelm Meister, and other books. Was Goethe a dissolute man? To which I replied with a sweeping negative. This led the conversation to biography, and he remarked : How many wooden biographies there are about. They are of no use. There are not F HORACE GREELEY. half a dozen good biographies in our language. You know what Carlylc says : I want to know what a man eats, what time he gets up, what colour his stockings are. (His, on this occasion, were white, with a hole in each heel.) There s no use in any man s writing a biography unless he can tell what no one else can tell. Seeing me glance at his pictures, he said he had brought them from Italy, but there was only one or two of them that he boasted of. "A talk upon politics ensued. He said he had enough of party politics. He would speak for temperance, and labour, and agriculture, and some other objects, but he was not going to stump the country any more to promote the interests of party or candidates. In alluding to political persons he used the utmost freedom of vituperation, but there was such an evident absence of anger and bitterness on his part, that if the vituperated individuals had overheard the conversation, they would not have been offended, but amused. Speaking of association, he said, Ah! our workingmen must be better educated ; we must have better schools ; they must learn to confide in one another more; then they will associate. Then, laughing, he added, If you know anybody afflicted with democracy, tell him to join an association; that will cure him if anything will; still, association will triumph in its day, and in its own way. In reply to G s definition of Webster as a petty man, with petty objects, sought by petty means, he said, I call him a ; but his last reply to Hayne was the biggest speech yet made ; it s only so long, pointing to a place on his arm, but it is very great. Another remark on another subject elicited from him the energetic assertion that the invention of the key was the Devil s masterpiece. Alluding to a recent paragraph of his, I said I thought it the best piece of English he had ever written. No/ he replied, there s a bad repetition in it of the word sober in the same sentence; I can write better English than that. I told him of the project of getting half a dozen of the best men and women of the country to join in preparing a series of school reading-books. He said, They would be in danger of shooting over the heads of the children. To which I replied, No; it is common men who do that; great men are simple, and akin to children. "A little child four years old, with long flaxen hair and ruddy cheeks, came in and said, Mother wants you up stairs. He caught it up in his arms with every manifestation of excessive fondness, saying, No, you rogue, it s you that want him; and the child wiggled out of his arms and ran away. "As I was going, some ladies came in, and I remained a moment longer at his request. He made a languid and quite indescribable attempt at introduction, merely mentioning the names of the ladies with a faint bob at each. One of them asked a question about Spiritualism. He said, I have paid no attention to that subject for two years. I became satisfied it would lead to no good. In fact I am so taken up with the things of this world, that I have too little time to spend on the affairs of the other. She said, A distinction ought to be made between those who investigate IN "FULL DRESS." 363 the phenomena as phenomena, and those who embrace them fanatically. Yes, said he, I have no objection to their being investigated by those who have more time than I have. Have you heard, asked the lady, of the young man who personates Shakespeare ? No, he replied, but I am satisfied there is no folly it will not run into. Then he rose and said, Take off your things and go up stairs. I must get some supper, for I have to go to that meeting at the Tabernacle to-night (anti-Nebraska). "As I passed the hat-stand in the hall, I said, Here is that immortal white coat. He smiled and said, People suppose it s the same old coat, but it isn t. I looked questioningly, and he continued, The original white coat came from Ireland. An emigrant brought it out ; he wanted money and I wanted a coat; so I bought it of him for twenty dollars, and it was the best coat I ever had. They do work well in the old countries; not in such a hurry as we do. "The door closed, and I was alone with the lamp-post. In another hour, Horace Greeley, after such a day of hunger and fatigue, was speak ing to an audience of three thousand people in the Tabernacle." Mr. Greeley never became heartily addicted to u full dress." The last time the writer of these words saw him was in 1870, on the Capitol steps in AVashington City. He stopped and talked for, perhaps, half an hour, though the day was broiling hot. I recollect that he was dressed in faultless style, and of afterwards remarking to Mr. Hawkins Taylor, with whom he walked up the avenue, that "Horace Greeley was the best dressed man I had seen in Washington." His cravat was not adjusted precisely hi the mode, his hat was evidently worn as a hat, not as an ornament, and his boots were not thin-soled ; but his whole toilet was that of careless elegance, befitting a distinguished gentleman, who spent no great amount of time in front of his looking-glass. The many thousands who have seen him on lecturing tours and on other occasions when he was off editorial duty, when not being driven before the tempestuous winds of his busy life, can scarcely credit the numerous accounts we have had of his carelessness as to dress. Yet they are correct in the main. His marching suit was not the same as that he wore on dress parade and the grand review. And it is certain that he never bestowed much time in getting himself into his best clothes. Several years before his death, he lectured on one occasion at the city of Hamilton, Ohio. A barber was sent for to shave him, and act as temporary valet de chambre, by whose elaborate labours 364 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Mr. Greeley appeared in the faultless fashion of an exquisite. He surveyed himself in the glass a moment, and exploded. Re-tying his cravat and jerking his standing collar about with energy of manner and of idium, while the valet vanished out of the storm, the lecturer appeared in due time with his wear ing gear a little awry about the neck, but otherwise without violation of the mode. He has been seen on the streets of New- York wearing a coat literally out at elbows. For many years of his life he was absolutely indifferent as to his dress, and at no time did he have the desire or the patience to give special attention to his personal appearance. That he came to be a passably well-dressed gentleman on occasions when not hard at work is a fact which we may in justice rather credit to the genius of his tailor than his own. If there has been one man who gave less attention to his toilet, as toilet, than any other, that man was, most likely, Horace Greeley. And yet no man ever lived who was more scrupulously clean. He believed in both internal and external applications of cold water. His usual time of sleep, in bed, was five or six hours. He was exceedingly skilful in catching naps wherever they were to be found, at church, the opera, the theatre, wherever he might happen to be with nothing of his own work to do. 2 He usually retired about an hour after midnight, and arising at 7 o clock in the morning, the first thing in order always was a vigorous bath. He invariably, when it was possible, bathed once daily, and not seldom twice. Two or three times in his life he was sorely afflicted with boils, the result, doubtless, of over-work and over-bathing Mr. Greeley had the habit of vituperation. He was, in language, an abusive man. This habit sometimes broke out 2 Nevertheless, Mr. Greeley seemed to be asieep, rather tnan actually slept, on such occasions. An old Washington friend of his, Mr. E. L. Stevens, tells me that he often saw Mr. Greeley at church while he was a member of Congress, He would come in, enter his pew, and soon be apparently sound asleep eyes closed, and his whole body motionless, except the Bteady breathing. Mr. Stevens several times asked Mr. Greeley what he thought of the sermon, and was astonished to find that in every instance he recapitulated the substance of the whole of it with great accuracy. " VITUPERATION." 305 in his editorials. He once began an editorial: "You lie villain! willfully, wickedly, basely lie!" This was in reply to an article in a respectable newspaper. In a letter to an official of the State of New York he dubbed a rival editor a " little villain." Akin to this was his profane swearing. It is at last established that on certain great occasions of wrath, George Washington exploded with bursts of profanity. He did not have the excuse that Mr. Greeley had; for Washington never was called upon to read what printers call "dirty proof." I doubt if there is anything so exasperating as this. It is true that Mr. Greeley did not write the most legible hand in the world, but he made good manuscript for a printer. His letters were awkwardly made, but they were all made; and his punctuation was always perfect. A short study of his writing should have made any bright printer able to put it into type without gross blunders. But let this be as it may, the manu script was perfectly plain to Mr. Greeley, so that when a proof or a revise came to him, wherein his wisdom was metamor phosed into nonsense, his terse expressions into horrible plati tudes, he boiled over. I think the Recording Angel, when he charges up a burst of profanity against an editor, and then looks upon the "dirty proof" which brought it forth, will erase the charge. I should, if I were the Recording Angel. 1 would let him off on the easiest possible terms. Having thus acquired the habit, in a way which entitles it to so much palli ation, Mr. Greeley sometimes exploded vigorously when ther was no foul proof to tempt him. 3 3 A story is told, and with substantial truth, as I know, of the Hon. Thomas W. Clagett, editor of The Keokuk (Iowa) Daily Constitution. Noted for his public spirit and generosity, he was also known as one who made a free use of the energetic idium. Upon one occasion a friend lectured him on the subject, concluding a lengthy homily with eulogising Hon. J. B. Howell, then Judge Clagett s rival editor, since a Senator of the United States, a Commissioner of Southern Claims, and ever a good and noble man at heart. "There," said the lecturer, "is our friend, Brother Howell, of The Gate City. He not only does not swear, but he is a Chris tian man; a praying man. I heard him make an excellent prayer at the meeting last evening." "Well, well, Sir," replied the Judge, "there is not so much difference between Brother Howell and me as you think there rs. I don t mean anything, Sir, by my swearing ; and Brother Howell don t mean anything by his praying!" 3G6 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Mr. Greeley s vituperation in conversation was not malig nant. His bark was "waur than his bite." Though free from malice and bad heartedness, entirely so, it was incon sistent with personal dignity. Horace Greeley always had a vigorous appetite. This he exercised at home, leaving his vigorous language to be exer cised elsewhere. But he never acquired a great fondness for rich viands. He ate to live. To " How are you, this morning, Mr. Greeley?" he would reply, "Stout," most generally. He ate a hearty but plain breakfast at home, but usually dined down town about four or five o clock. His dinner was sub stantial, eaten with astonishing vigour and some awkwardness of manner, finished with a glass of cold water. He detested state dinners, and though he participated in many such festive occasions, presiding at some public dinners of historic interest, he enjoyed everything else better than the viands. It is related of him that calling to visit a friend one evening, he found several persons in the parlour, and concluded to sit a while, though he had not yet dined. The hostess brought in a great plate filled with doughnuts and passed it to Mr. Greeley. Placing the plate on his knees, and becoming intently engaged in the conversation, he ate away at the doughnuts until the last one had vanished. Though he had eaten about a half-peck of concentrated "richness" and lard, no ill result followed. Tlie hostess thought he might even have safely disposed of another dish full, and that without knowing it himself. Excessive devotion to hospitality is the renowned virtue of -Arabs and of American Indians. It is impossible for men of greatly active lives to squander much time in mere amenities and agreeabilities. To them life is real, life is earnest. Hospi tality abounds most among those who have others to labour for them. It is, indeed, a pleasant rite; and the one thing most needful of all in the enjoyable exercise of the rite, is an elegant cook of versatile genius and accomplishments. And this must be in the person of the female head of the house hold. Otherwise some things will go wrong in some way or at some place between the kitchen and the dining-room. Mrs. HIS LOVF. OF CHILDREN. 30 T Greeley was not a versatile and accomplished cook. She might have been, no doubt; for in a matter of so much importance as civilized eating. Providence has wisely ordained that one may become a great cook simply by putting one s mind to it. A hundredth part of the time given by American ladies quite generally to the study of the subject of their head-gear would enable every one to direct the cooking of an excellent breakfast or dinner. Mrs. Greeley s principles upon the subject of food prevented her from becoming popular as a dispenser of hospi tality, though she never was devoted to external head-gear. And it hence happened that Mr. Greeley never became cele brated for the excellence of his dinners. Such hospitality as he dispensed was from a frugal board, but the guest was gener ously welcomed and most kindly and unaffectedly entertained. Such natural welcome, such homely entertainment might Cin- cinnatus have extended to the visiting citizens of Rome whose homes he had saved from sack and pillage. If Mr. Greeley s hospitality, during many years, was not great in the dining rooms, it was ever great, genial, and most agreeable in the drawing-rooms. One of his most beautiful characteristics, ever spreading sunshine and warmth throughout his home, was his tender love of his children. He had a warm side in his nature for all children, and could not see one in sorrow without being visibly affected, " O, poor little fellow!" he would say to some crying urchin on Broadway, who had been hurt or imposed upon, "go buy what you want with that," handing him a liberal gift. But at home with his own children, he was himself a child again, simple, joyous, playful, rolicking. I suppose he never was angry with a child in all his life. As he was so intensely devoted to his children, so were they most devotedly attached to him. They always took liberties with him. He wept with them when they wept, and rejoiced when they rejoiced. The early death of all but two of his children cast an unending shadow upon his soul, but intensified to a degree almost super natural his affection for the two daughters who survived him. If there is anything in English literature more touching, 368 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEV. more beautiful, more reverential ; more demonstrative of tenderness and benignity of soul, than his account of his own family dead, I have never seen it. The man who can read the account of the death of "Pickie" without emotion, is greatly to be pitied. Let me sanctify this volume with Mr. Greeley s own description: 4 My son, Arthur Young (" Pickie "), born in March, 1844, was the third of seven children, whereof a son and daughter, severally born in 1838 and in 1842, scarcely opened their eyes to a world which they entered but to leave. Physically, they were remarkable for their striking resemblance in hair and features to their father and mother respectively. Arthur had points of similarity to each of us, but with decided superior ity, as a whole, to either. I looked in vain through Italian galleries, two years after he was taken from us, for any full parallel to his dazzling beauty, a beauty not physical merely, but visibly radiating from the soul. His hair was of the finest and richest gold; "the sunshine of pic ture " never glorified its equal ; and the delicacy of his complexion at once fixed the attention of observers like the late N. P. Willis, who had traversed both hemispheres without having his gaze arrested by any child who could bear a comparison with this one. Yet he was not one of those paragons sometimes met with, whose idlest chatter would edify a Sunday school, who never do or say aught that propriety would not sanction and piety delight in, but thoroughly human, and endued with a love of play and mischief which kept him busy and happy the livelong day, while rendering him the delight and admiration of all around him. The arch delicacy wherewith he inquiringly suggested, when once told a story that overtaxed his credulity, " I pose that aint a lie ?" was characteristic of his nature. Once, when about three years old, having chanced to espy my watch lying on a sofa as I was dressing one Sunday morning, with no third person present, he made a sudden spring of several feet, caught the watch by the chain, whirled it around his head, and sent it whizzing against the chimney, shattering its face into fragments. " Pickie," I inquired, rather sadly than angrily, "how could you do me such injury?" " Cause I was nervous," he regretfully replied. There were ladies then making part of our household whose nerves were a source of general as well as personal discomfort; and this was his attestation of the fact. There were wiser and deeper sayings treasured as they fell from his lips ; but I will not repeat them. Several yet live who remember the graceful gayety wherewith he charmed admiring circles assembled at our house, and at two or three larger gatherings of friends of Social Reform in this city, and at the N. A. Phalanx in New Jersey; and I think some grave seigniors, who were accustomed to help us enjoy our Saturday afternoons in our rural suburban residence at Turtle Bay, were drawn thither as much by their admiration of the son as by their regard for his parents. * Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 426, et seq. DEATH OF "PIOKIE." 36 ( J Meantime, another daughter was given to us, and, after six months, withdrawn ; and still another born, who yet survives ; and he had run far into his sixth year without one serious illness. His mother had devoted herself to him from .his birth, even beyond her intense consecration to the care of her other children; had never allowed him to partake of animal food, or to know that an animal was ever killed to be eaten ; had watched and tended him with absorbing love, till the perils of infancy seemed fairly vanquished ; and we had reason to hope that the light of our eyes would be spared to gladden our remaining years. It was otherwise decreed. In the Summer of 1849, the Asiatic cholera suddenly reappeared in our city, and the frightened authorities ordered all swine, etc., driven out of town, that is, above Fortieth street, whereas our home was about Forty-eighth street, though no streets had yet been cut through that quarter. At once, and before we realized our danger, the atmosphere was polluted by the exhalations of the swinish multitude thrust upon us from the densely peopled hives south of us, and the cholera claimed its victims by scores before we were generally aware of its presence. Our darling was among the first; attacked at 1 A. M. of the 12th of July, when no medical attendance was at hand ; and our own prompt, unre- mitted efforts, reenforced at length by the best medical skill within reach, availed nothing to stay the fury of the epidemic, to which he succumbed about 5 P. M. of that day, one of the hottest, as well as quite the longest, I have ever known. He was entirely sane and conscious till near the last ; insisting that he felt little or no pain and was well, save that we kept him sweltering under clothing that he wanted to throw off, as he did whenever he was permitted. When at length the struggle ended with his last breath, and even his mother was convinced that his eyes would never again open on the scenes of this world, I knew that the Summer of my life was over, that the chill breath of its Autumn was at hand, and that my future course must be along the downhill of life. Yet another son (Raphael Uhland) was born to us two years afterward ; who, though more like his father and less like a poet than Arthur, was quite as deserving of parental love, though not so eminently fitted to evoke and command general admiration. He was with me in France and Switzerland in the Summer of 1855; spending, with his mother and sister, the previous "Winter in London and that subsequent in Dresden ; returning with them in May, 56, to fall a victim to the croup the ensuing February. I was absent on a lecturing tour when apprised of his dangerous illness, and hastened home to find that he had died an hour before my arrival, though he had hoped and striven to await my return. He had fulfilled his sixth year and twelve days over when our home was again made desolate by his death. Another daughter was born to us four weeks later, who survives ; so that we have reason to be grateful for two children left to soothe our decline, HS well as for five who, having preceded us on the long journey, await us m the Land of Souls. 24 870 LIFE OF HORACE GBEELEY. My life has been busy and anxious, but not joyless. Whether it shall be prolonged few or more years, I am grateful that it has endured so long, and that it has abounded in opportunities for good not wholly unim proved, and in experiences of the nobler as well as the baser impulses of human nature. I have been spared to see the end of giant wrongs, which I once deemed invincible in this century, and to note the silent upspring- ing and growth of principles and influences which I hail as destined to root out some of the most flagrant and pervading evils that yet remain. I realize that each generation is destined to confront new and peculiar perils, to wrestle with temptations and seductions unknown to its pre decessors; yet I trust that progress is a general law of our being, and that the ills and woes of the future shall be less crushing than those of the bloody and hateful past. So, looking calmly, yet humbly, for that close of my mortal career which cannot be far distant, I reverently thank God for the blessings vouchsafed me in the past ; and, with an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope, await the opening before my steps of the gates of the Eternal World. Mr. Greelej s taste as to home adornments has been indicated in the preceding pages. He cared little, perhaps nothing, for display. His furniture was not of the finest. But in his European travels, he had met with paintings and sculptures which he liked, and though inclined to "bare walls," his home became somewhat crowded with paintings and statuary. He had a number of really excellent paintings, and a statuette or two by Powers, with many another gem of beauty in art. There was a rustic air ever about Mr. Greeley s home; an air of rustic elegance. There was the sweet, pure, wholesome zephyrs of the country murmuring evermore through apart ments of unostentious refinement and the beautiful simplicity of the elder time. Indeed, Mr. Parton in his biography remarks with great truth, that in manner Mr. Greeley continued to be a rustic; that the metropolis had been able to make only little impres sion upon him; and that he lived amid the million of his fellow-citizens, in their various uniforms, ari unassimilated man. Men of the world, happily named, for they are invaria bly at bottom of the earth earthy, men of the world are never unsophisticated. I think they call it " green." Wise men are always " green," and often fail to "ripen during the whole course of their lives. Socrates sober and Alcibiades "GREEN" MEN. o. 1 drunk, would be a fine picture and an instructive. Men of the world would inevitably take off their hats to the wrong man. Carlyle was wise, but it was very " green " in him to say that "courtesy is the due of man to man, not of suit-of- clothes to suit-of-clothes." Horace Greeley was " green." As we have quoted from Mr. Parton, he lived in a city of a million souls an unassimilated man. In many respects city life rasped harshly, almost cruelly, upon his nature. It was something like undertaking to make Rob Roy stamp a Broadway pavement, exclaiming, " I tread my native heath, and my name is MacGregor!" He longed for the free air, the green woods, for room in which to breathe freely. Nothing could have been more natural, there fore, or a more proper thing for him to do, than to become a farmer. Accordingly, he bought a farm. CHAPTEK XXI. HORACE GREELEY, THE FARMER His Love of Rural Life But Not of Ox-Life His Wife s Judgment Principally Consulted as to The Farm Site Chappaqua A Descrip tion of the Place The First Forest Home There Mr. Greeley s Mode of Improving the Place His Practical Farming The Later Home General Facts as to his Farmer-Life His Work Entitled "What I Know of Farming" The Subject of Innumerable Jests Their Effect Upon Him. " I SHOULD have been a farmer," says Mr. Greeley. "All my riper tastes incline to that blessed calling whereby the human family and its humbler auxiliaries are fed. Its quiet, its segregation from strife, and brawls, and heated rivalries, attract and delight me." And he goes on to say that, though content with his lot, and grateful for the generosity wherewith his labours had been rewarded, yet would he choose to earn his bread by cultivating the soil, were he to begin life anew. "Blessed is he," he exclaims, "whose day s exertion ends with the evening twilight, and who can sleep unbrokenly and with out anxiety till the dawn awakens him, with energies renewed and senses brightened, to fresh activity and that fulness of health and vigour which are vouchsafed to those only who spend most of their waking hours in the free, pure air and renovating sunshine of the .open country." 1 Mr. Greeley thus thought, in 1868, when these words were written, that he not only should have been a farmer, on account of abounding love of rural life, but he also asserted that he would have devoted his life to that calling, had any science of farming been known to those among whom his earlier boy hood was passed. Whilst he loved the country, was passion ately devoted to it, in fact, he fairly loathed, as we have seen in the early part of his work, the mindless pursuit of farming 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 295. BUYS A FARM. 373 as farming was when he was a boy. It was, he long afterwards said, a work for oxen; and for him the life of an ox had no charms. He had abandoned farm life because, though he had perceived all there was in the farmer s calling, as then con ducted, he had not really learned much more of it, as it should be, " than a good plough-horse ought to understand." It was a quarter of a century after he gave up farm life to learn the trade of a printer, that he felt able to buy a farm. Earlier than this he had been a small farmer on his rented place of some eight acres opposite Blackwell s Island, herein before described. While on this little farm, he says that " one fine Spring morning, a neighbour called and offered to plough for $5 my acre of tillage not cut up by ro\vs of box and other shrubs ; and I told him to go ahead. I came home next even ing, just as he was finishing the job, which I contemplated most ruefully. His plough was a pocket edition; his team a single horse; his furrows at most five inches deep. I paid him, but told him plainly that I would have preferred to give the money for nothing. He insisted that he had ploughed for me as he had ploughed for others all around me. I will tell you, I rejoined, exactly how this will work. Throughout the Spring and early Summer, we shall have frequent rains and moderate heat: thus far my crops will do well. But then will come hot weeks, with little or no rain; and they will dry up this shallow soil and everything planted thereon. The result signally justified my prediction. We had frequent rains and cloudy, mild weather, till the 1st of "July, when the clouds vanished, the sun came out intensely hot, and we had scarcely a sprinkle till the 1st of September, by which time my corn and potatoes had about given up the ghost." 2 The fancy farming at Turtle Bay gave way to city life again, and the famous Chappaqua farm, his final and successful venture, was bought in 1853. The purchase of this property is thus described by Mr. Greeley himself: The choice was substantially directed by my wife, who said that she insisted on but three requisites, 1. A peerless spring of pure, soft, living * What I know of Farming, pp. 87-8. 374: LIFE OF HOKACE GKEELEY. water ; 2. A cascade or brawling brook ; 3. Woods largely composed of evergreens. These may seem, light matters ; yet I was some time in finding them grouped on the same small plat, within reasonable distance from the city. I did find them, however; and those who object to my taste in choosing for my home a rocky, wooded hillside, sloping to the north of west, with a bog at its foot, cannot judge me fairly, unless they consider the above requirements. My land was previously the rugged, mainly wooded, outskirt of two adjacent farms, whereof my babbling brook formed the boundary. Nine miles above White Plains, and thirty-five N. N. E. of our City Hall, the Harlem Eailroad, when nearly abreast of the village of Sing-Sing, and six miles east of it, just after entering the township of Newcastle, crosses a quite small, though pretty constant, mill-stream, named by the Indians Cliappaqua, which is said to have meant falling or babbling water, and which, here running to the southeast, soon takes a southwesterly turn, recrosses under the railroad, and finds its way into the Hudson, through the Sawmill or Nepperhan creek, at Yonkers. A highway, leading west ward to Sing-Sing, crosses the railroad, just north of the upper crossing of the brook, and gives us, some twenty rods from the northwest corner of my farm, a station and a post-office, which, with our modest village of twenty or thirty houses, take their name from our mill-stream. Cliap paqua is not a very liquid trisyllable, but there is comfort in the fact that it is neither Clinton nor Washington, nor Middletown, nor any of the trite appellations which have so often been reapplied, that half the letters intended for one of them are likely to bring up at some other. (How can a rational creature be so thoughtless as to date his letter merely " Green field," or "Jackson," or "Springfield," and imagine that the stranger he addresses can possibly guess whither to mail the answer ?) My brook has its source in wooded, granite hills, on the east southeast, and comes tinkling or brawling thence to be lost in the Chappaqua, a few rods south of the road to Pleasantville, which forms my southwestern boundary. As to springs, there are not less than a dozen, which no drouth exhausts, breaking out along the foot of my hill, or at the base of a higher ridge which forms its crest. My woods are the pride of the Tarm, which without them would never have been my farm. They cover about twenty-five of the seventy-five acres which compose it; and I say to them, with Oriental courtesy, and more than Oriental sincerity, "May your shadow never be less!" For the ground they cover is in good part an irregular, sideling granite ledge, or portions of a ledge, thinly covered by a granitic, gravelly soil, which could not be made to grow anything but wood to the profit of the grower ; whereas, it grows wood better than a rich Illinois or Kansas prairie often condescends to do. Its trees are mainly Hemlock and Red Cedar (rny evergreens) ; White and Red Oak, White-wood, Chestnut, White and Blue Beech, Dogwood, White Ash, Sugar and Soft Maple, Elm, Hickory, Tulip, Butternut, Black, Yellow, and White Birch. There were just two trees CHAPPAQUA. 375 that I could not name, after twenty years absorption in the city ; one of them is known as Pepperidge, the other as Yellow Poplar. There were a good many wild Black Cherries: but these I have nearly exterminated, as they breed caterpillars to infest my Apple-trees. Of shrubs, there are many that I cannot name. Witch Hazel, Bunch Willow, Choke Cherry, Hazel, Sassafras, and Sumac, are among those that I readily recognized. Swamp Alder infested the springy, rocky, boggy ground at the foot of one of my hills, till I extirpated it, and the Dogwood is marked for speedy destruction. It beautifies nay, glorifies the woods while in blossom for a week or so early in May ; but it is of no account as timber, while it sows its seed everywhere, and tends to monopolize a good deal more ground than it will pay for. My first care, on getting possession of my farm, was to shut cattle out of the greater part of the woods, whore they had been free to roam and ra.age throughout the two preceding centuries that this region had felt the presence of civilized man. Pasturing woods is one of the most glaring vices of our semi-barbarian agriculture. Cattle browse the tender fwigs of delicate, valuable young trees, while they leave the coarse and worthless unscathed. I have, to-day, ten times as many of the Sugar Maple, White Ash, etc., coming on in my woods as there were when I bought and shut the cattle out of them. I have no blind horror of cutting trees. Any fairly grown forest can always spare trees, and be benefitted by their removal. But I protest most earnestly against the reckless waste involved in cutting ott and burning over our forests. In regions which are all woods, ground must of course be cleared for cultivation; but many a farmer goes on slashing and burn ing long after he should halt and begin to be saving of his timber. Many of our dairymen are beginning to say, " Down with the rest of our woods ! we can buy all the coal we need for fuel, with half the butter and cheese we can make on our lands now covered with wood." Friends, that is a sad miscalculation. With one-fourth of your land in wood, judiciously covering the crests of your ridges, the sides of your ravines, your farms will grow more grass than if wholly denuded and laid bare to the scorch ing sun. Protracted, desolating drouths, bleak, scathing winds, and the failure of delicate fruits like the Peach and finer Pears, are part of the penalty we pay for depriving our fields and gardens of the genial, hospi table protection of forests. Of tree-planting, other than for fruit, I have as yet done little. A row of Rock Maples along the highways that skirt my farm, and a clump of evergreens just north of my garden, are nearly all I have to show. Any one can grow Sugar Maples who will try. To prove it, I need only say that I have lost but two in over a hundred, and these by accident, though my trees mainly came from Rochester, were opened on a warm, sunny day, and left thus with their roots exposed till thoroughly dry. I came upon the planter just then, and told him he had killed the trees; but I was mistaken. I would, however, advise no one to try the experiment of drying the roots of trees while transplanting them ; but if he will be so 376 LITE OF HORACE GBEELEY. careless, lie may better take the risk on the Sugar Maple than on any other- tree within my knowledge. As there is a stout hill just south of my farm, my lower land is over shadowed by hills in the two wrong directions, and so inclines to be cold. Just north of where my brook dances out of the glen which it has worn THE CLrMP OF EVERGREENS. down the face of the hill is my garden, with a slight elevation or ridge just north of it. This low ridge I have planted with evergreens, as a shelter or wind-break for the garden. Part of them are Hemlocks and Red Cedars, transplanted from the woods just at hand; perhaps as many are Norway and other Pines, with Balsam and other Firs, obtained from nurseries. These latter have the more luxuriant growth, but all have done well ; and the copse or clump possibly forty rods in length by three or four in width is (at least in Winter) the pleasantest object seen on the farm. The little green house which nestles beneath it is flanked by strawberry beds, a few grape vines, and room for early vegetables, which, sloping gently southward, enjoy an average temperature several degrees higher than they would if the evergreens were away ; and the acre or so of level garden farther south is also, but less considerably, warmed and sheltered by this belt of ever greens, which not only verifies Shelley s apothegm, that "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," but is a positive reenforcement to the productive capacity of the farm. s 3 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 296, et seg. A HOME IN THE WOODS. 377 A little farther on he describes how he worked among his trees in a manner which is at the same time interesting, instruc tive, and droll: The woods are my special department. Whenever I can save a Saturday for the farm, I try to give a good part of it to my patch of forest. The axe is the healthiest implement that man ever handled, and is especially so for habitual writers and other sedentary workers, w y hose shoulders it throws back, expanding their chests, and opening their lungs. If every youth and man, from fifteen to fifty years old, could wield an axe two hours per day, dyspepsia would vanish from the earth, and rheumatism become decidedly scarce. I am a poor chopper ; yet the axe is my doctor and delight. Its use gives the mind just enough occupation to prevent its falling into revery or absorbing trains of thought, while every muscle in the body receives sufficient, yet not exhausting, exercise. I wish all our boys would learn to love the axe. I began by cutting out the Witch Hazels, and other trash not worth keeping, and trimming up my trees, especially the Hemlocks, which grow limbs clear to the ground, and throw them out horizontally to such a dis tance that several rods of ground are sometimes monopolized by a single tree. Many of these lower limbs die in the course of time, but do not fall off; on the contrary, they harden and sharpen into spikes, which threaten your face and eyes as if they were bayonets. These I have gradually cut away and transformed into fuel. Many of my Hemlocks I have trimmed to a height of at least fifty feet; and I mean to serve many others just so, if I can ever find time before old age compels me to stop climbing. But the Hemlock so bristles throughout with limbs that it can easily be climbed by a hale man till he is seventy; and, working with a hatchet 01 light axe, you commence trimming at the top, that is as high as you choose to trim, and, without difficulty, cut all smooth as you work your way down. Limbs to the ground may be graceful in the edge of youi wood ; but your tree will not make timber nearly so fast as if trimmed, and you cannot afford it so much space as it claims in the heart of youi patch of forest. If I linger proudly among my trees, consider that here most of my farm- work has been done, and here my profit has been realized, in the shape of health and vigour. When I am asked the usual question, " How has your farming paid?" I can truthfully answer that my part of it has paid splen didly, being all income and no outgo, and who can show a better balance- sheet than that f* Soon after buying his farm, Mr. Greeley built him a home in the woods. He says of it in the work from which the fore going extracts have been made: 4 Ibid. 303-1. 378 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. In the little dell or glen through which my brook emerges from the wood wherein it has brawled down the hill, to dance across a gentle slope to the swamp below, is tfie spring, pure as crystal, never-failing, cold as you could wish it for drink in the hottest day, and so thoroughly shaded and sheltered that, I am confident, it was never warm and never frozen over. Many springs on my farm are excellent, but this is peerless. It determined the location of my house, which stands on a little plateau or bench of level ground halfway down the hill, some twenty rods north of, and forty feet higher than, itself. I never saw a sweeter spot than was THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS. the little plat of grass which my house has supplanted, with tall w T oods all around, and a thrifty growth of young hemlocks starting thickly just west and south of it. I do not now regard this as a judicious location: it is too much shaded and shut in; it is too damp for health in a wet time; it tempts the chimney to smoke, especially when the atmosphere is so heavy that the wind beats down over the wooded hill that rises directly on the FARM WORK. 379 north and east ; but the hottest day is cool here ; dust is unknown ; and no rumble from any highway disturbs meditation or piques curiosity. My house is not much, hastily erected, small, slight, and wooden, it has at length been almost deserted for one recently purchased and refitted on the edge of the village, just where my private road emerges from the farm, on its way to the station ; but the cottage in the woods it still my house, where my books remain, where I mean to garner my treasures, and wherein I propose to be "at home " to my friends at stated seasons, and "not at home " to any one when I address myself to work, and especially to the consummation of a yet unaired literary project. But these are dreams, which opportunity may never be afforded to realize. As yet, I am a horse in a bark-mill, and tread his monotonous round ; never finding time to do to-day what can possibly be postponed to the morrow. The intelligent reader may judge from the illustration that the " house in the woods " was not only " too damp for health in a wet time," but at any time. The bane, as well as the ugliness, of too many American homes is the want of lawn. One may see many a u front-yard " of beautiful residence so over-adorned with evergreens, mountain-ash trees, shrubbery, that one can hardly see the house, but can plainly perceive from the thriftless, yellow grass, and the very odour of the dank atmosphere, that here is an utter ignorance of the might and beauty and beneficence of sunshine. Eternal shade is eternal gloom and an infallible recipe against good health and bright spirits. We have already seen how in some respects Mr. Greeley improved his farm. Originally of poor soil in portions, and a swamp where the soil was rich, he made the whole produc tive, and became highly successful in raising wheat, Indian corn, other grains, and roots with the exception of potatoes. He was very fortunate with turnips and Indian corn a fact manifested by several premiums at agricultural fairs. But perhaps the most notable success of Mr. Greeley as a farmer was in making his marshy land (" My Swamp," as he calls it) cultivable and very productive. He gives a full account of his labours in this part of his farm-life, in a chap ter in " What I Know of Farming," introductory to the general subject of draining. 8 * Page 62 et seq. oSO LIFE OF HOKACE GEEELEY. My farm is in the township of Newcastle, Westchester County, N. Y., 35 miles from our City Hall, and a little eastward of the hamlet known as Chappaqua, called into existence by a station on the Harlem Railroad. It embraces the south-easterly half of the marsh which the railroad here traverses from south to north my part measuring some fifteen acres, with five acres more of slightly elevated dry land between it and the foot of the rather rugged hill which rises thence on the east and on the south, and of which I now own some fifty acres, lying wholly eastward of my low land, and in good part covered with forest. Of this, I bought more than half in 1853, and the residue in bits from time to time as I could afford it. The average cost was between $130 and $140 per acre : one small and poor old cottage being the only building I found on the tract, which consisted of the ragged edges of two adjacent farms, between the western portions of which mine is now interposed, while they still adjoin each other beyond the north and south road, half a mile from the railroad, on which their buildings are located and which forms my eastern boundary. My stony, gravelly upland mainly slopes to the west; but two acres on my east line incline toward the road which bounds me in that direction, while two more on my south east corner descend to the little brook which, entering at that corner, keeps irregularly near my south line, until it emerges, swelled by a smaller runnel that enters my lowland from the north and traverses it to meet and pass off with the larger brooklet aforesaid. I have done some draining, to no great purpose, on the more level portions of my upland; but my lowland has challenged my best efforts in this line, and I shall here explain them, for the encouragement and possible guidance of novices in draining. Let me speak first of MY DIFFICULTIES. This marsh or bog consisted, when I first grappled with it, of some thirty acres, whereof I .then owned less than a third. To drain it to advantage, one person should own it all, or the different owners should cooperate ; but I had to go it alone, with no other aid than a freely accorded privilege of straightening as well as deepening the brook which wound its way through the dryer meadow just below me, forming here the boundary of two adjacent farms. I spent $100 on this job, which is still imperfect ; but the first decided fall in the stream occurs nearly a mile below me ; and you tire easily of doing at your own cost work which ben efits several others as much as yourself. My drainage will never be perfect till this brook, with that far larger one in which it is merged sixty rods below me, shall have been sunk three or four feet, at a further expense of at least $500. This bog or swamp, when I first bought into it, was mainly dedicated to the use of frogs, muskrats, and snapping-turtles. A few small water-elms and soft maples grew upon it, with swamp alder partly fringing the west ern base of the hill east of it, where the rocks which had, through thousands of years, rolled from the hill, thickly covered the surface, with springs bubbling up and around among them. Decaying stumps and imbedded fragments of trees argued that timber formerly covered this marsh as well as the encircling hills. A tall, dense growth of blackberry briers, thor- DRATNING. 381 oughwort, and all manner of marsh-weeds and grasses covered the centre of the swamp each Summer ; but my original portion of it, being too wet for these, was mainly addicted to hassocks or tussocks of wiry, worthless grass ; their matted roots rising in hard bunches a few inches above the soft, bare, encircling mud. The bog ranged in depth from a few inches to five or six feet, and was composed of black, peaty, vegetable mold, diver sified by occasional streaks of clay or sand, all resting on a substratum of hard, coarse gravel, out of which two or three springs bubbled up, in addition to the half a dozen which poured in from the east, and a tiny rivulet which (except in a very dry, hot time) added the tribute of three or four more, which sprang from the base of a higher shelf of the hill near the middle of what is now my farm. Add to these that the brook which brawled and foamed down my hill-side near my south line as aforesaid, had brought along an immensity of pebbles and gravel of which it had mainly formed my five acres of dryer lowland, had thus built up a pretty swale, whereon it had the bad habit of filling up one channel, and then cutting another, more devious and eccentric, if possible, than any of its predecessors and you have some idea of the obstacles I encountered and resolved to overcome. One of my first substantial improvements was the cutting of a straight channel for this current and, by walling it with large stones, compelling the brook to respect necessary limitations. It was not my fault that some of those stones were set nearly upright, so as to veneer the brook rather than thoroughly constrain it; hence, some of the stones, undermined by strong currents, were pitched forward into the brook by high Spring freshets, so as to require resetting more carefully. This was a mistake, but not one of MY BLUNDERS. These, the natural results of inexperience and haste, were very grave. Not only had I had no real experience in draining when I began, but I could hire no foreman who knew much more of it than I did. I ought to have begun by securing an ample and sure fall where the water left my land, and next cut down the brooklet or open ditch into which I intended to drain to the lowest practicacle point so low, at least, that no drain running into it should ever be troubled with back-water. Nothing can be more useless than a drain in which water stagnates, chok ing it with mud. Then I should have bought hundreds of Hemlock or other cheap boards, slit them to a width of four or five inches, and, having opened the needed drains, laid these in the bottom and the tile thereupon, taking care to break-joint, by covering the meeting ends of two boards with the middle of a tile. Laying tile in the soft mud of a bog, with nothing beneath to prevent their sinking, is simply throwing away labour and money. I cannot wonder that tile-draining seems to many a humbug, seeing that so many tile are laid so that they can never do any good. Having, by successive purchases, become owner of fully half this swamp, and by repeated blunders discovered that making stone drains in a bog, while it is a capital mode of getting rid of the stone, is no way at all to dry the soil, I closed my series of experiments two years since by carefully relaying my generally useless tile on good strips of board, sink- 382 LIFE OF HOEACE GREELEY. ing them just as deep as I could persuade the water to run off freely, and, instead of allowing them to discharge into a brooklet or open ditch, con necting each with a covered main of four to six-inch tile ; these mains discharging into the running brook which drains all my farm and three or four of those above it just where it runs swiftly off from my land. If a thaw or heavy rain swells the brook (as it sometimes will) so that it rises above my outlet aforesaid, the strong current formed by the concentration, of the clear contents of so many drains will not, allow the muddy water of the brook to back into it so many as three feet at most; and any mud or sediment that may be deposited there will be swept out clean whenever the brook shall have fallen to the drainage level. MY SUCCESS. I judge that there are not many tracts more difficult to drain than mine was, considering all the circumstances, except those which are frequently flowed by tides or the waters of some lake or river. Had I owned the entire swamp, or had there been a fall in the brook just below me, had I had any prior experience in draining, or had others equally interested cooperated in the good work, my task would have been comparatively light. As it was, I made mistakes which increased the cost and postponed the success of my efforts ; but this is at length complete. I had seven acres of Indian Corn, one of Corn Fodder, two of Oats, and seven or eight acres of Grass, on my lowland in 1869; and, though the Spring months were quite rainy, and the latter part of Summer rather dry, my crops were all good. I did not see better in Westchester County ; and I shall be quite content with as good hereafter. Of my seven hundred bushels of Corn (ears), I judge that two-thirds would be accounted fit for seed anywhere ; my Grass was cut twice, and yielded one large crop and another heavier than the average first crop throughout our State. My drainage will require some care henceforth ; but the fifteen acres I have reclaimed from utter uselessness and obstructions are decidedly the best part of my farm. Uplands may be exhausted ; these never can be. The experience of another season (1870) of protracted drouth has fully justified my most sanguine expectations. I had this year four acres of Corn, and as many of Oats, on my swamp, with the residue in Grass ; and they were all good. I estimate my first Hay crop at over two and a half tuns per acre, while the rowen or aftermath barely exceeded half a tun, per acre, because of the severity of the drouth, which began in July and lasted till October. My Oats were good, but not remarkably so ; and I had 810 bushels of ears of sound, ripe Corn from four acres of drained swamp and two and a half of upland. I estimate my upland Corn at seventy (shelled) bushels, and my lowland at fifty-five (shelled) bushels per acre. Others, doubtless, had more, despite the unpropitious season ; but my crop was a fair one, and I am content with it. My upland Corn was heavily manured : my lowland but moderately. There are many to tell you how much I lose by my farming. I only say that, as yet, no one else has lost a farthing by it, and I do not complain. In a less extensive way, Mr. Greeley also had noteworthy IRRIGATING. 383 success in irrigation; and also failure, of which he gives char acteristic account: When I first bought land I fully purposed to provide for irrigating my nearly level acres at will, and I constructed two dams across my upland stream with that view ; but they were so badly planned that they went off in the flood caused by a tremendous rain the next Spring; and, though I rebuilt one of them, I submitted to a miscalculation which provided for taking the water, by means of a syphon, out of the pond at the top and over the bank that rose fifteen or twenty feet above the surface of the water. Of course, air would work into the pipe after it had carried a stream unexceptionably for two or three days, and then the water would run no longer. Had I taken it from the bottom of the pond through my dam, it would have run forever (or so long as there was water covering its inlet in the pond); but bad engineering flung me; and I have never since had the heart (or the means) to revise and correct its errors. My next attempt was on a much humbler scale, and I engineered it mj-self. Toward the north end of my farm, the hill-side which rises east of my lowland is broken by a swale or terrace, which gives me three or four acres of tolerably level upland, along the upper edge of which five or six springs, which never wholly fail, burst from the rocks above and unite to form a petty runnel, which dries up in very hot or dry weather, but which usually preserved a tiny stream to be lost in the swamp below. North of the gully cut down the lower hill-side by thio streamlet, the hill side of some three acres is quite steep, still partially wooded, and wholly devoted to pasturage. Making a petty dam across this runnel at the top of the lower acclivity, I turned the stream aside, so that it should hence- forth run along the crest of this lower hill, falling off gradually so as to secure a free current, and losing its contents at intervals through variable depressions in its lower bank. Dam and artificial water-course together cost me $90, which was about twice what it should have been. That rude and petty contrivance has now been ten years in operation, and may have cost $5 per annum for oversight and repairs. Its effect has been to double the grass grown on the two acres it constantly irrigates, for which I paid $280, or more than thrice the cost of my irrigation. But more : my hill side, while it was well grassed in Spring, always gave out directly after the first dry, or hot week ; so that, when I most needed feed, it afforded none ; its herbage being parched up and dead, and thus remaining till refreshed by generous rains. I judge, therefore, that my irrigation has more than doubled the product of these two acres, and that these are likely to lose nothing in yield or value so long as that petty irrigating ditch shall be maintained. I know this is small business. But suppose each of the hundred thou sand New-England farms, whereof five to ten acres might be thus irrigated at a cost not exceeding $100 per farm, had been similarly prepared to flow those acres last Spring and early Summer, with an average increase there from of barely one tun of Hay (or its equivalent in pasturage) per acre. 384: LIFE OF HORACE GKEELET. The 500,000 tuns of Hay thus realized would have saved 200,000 head of cattle from being sent to the butcher while too thin for good beef, while every one of them was required for further use, and will have to be re placed at a heavy cost. Shall not these things be considered ? Shall not all who can do so at moderate cost resolve to test on their own farms the advantages and benefits that may be secured by Irrigation? 6 When Mr. G-reeley removed to his later farmhouse, which continued to be his home during the remainder of his life, the Chappaqua property had been vastly improved, and very much of the work had been done under his direct supervision, not a little, especially in the woods and orchard, by his own hands. The residence itself was a large, plain mansion, with wide piazzas extending along the entire front of the building. It is an exceedingly comfortable home, and, with few trees to shut out the sun, has an air of cheerfulness unknown to the house in the woods. Mr. Greeley s orchard became quite famous in the country, and in 1870 a great fruit year he produced more cider apples than he could sell to the vinegar-makers at fifty cents a barrel. He built a fine barn on his farm, wholly of stones gathered or blasted from the slope near the summit of which it stands. He built it in such manner that the walls are nearly solid rock, the roof being of Vermont slate. " I drive," he says, " into three stories, a basement for manures, a stable for animals, and a story above this for hay, while grain is pitched into the loft or scaffold above, from whose floor the roof rises steep to a height of sixteen to eighteen feet. There should have been more windows for light and air; but my barn is convenient, while impervious to frost, and I am con fident that cattle are wintered in it at a fourth less cost than when they shiver in board shanties, with cracks between the boards that will admit your hand." Thus the general facts in respect of Mr. Greeley s farmer- life were: He found healthful exercise for both body and mind in the labour which he there performed. He succeeded admirably in making a considerable tract of what in many portions of the country would be thought " waste land " not 6 Ibid. pp. 7&-7-S. Ih "WHAT i KNOW OF FARMING." 385 only cultivable but a highly valuable portion of his farm. He raised good crops. Year after year, his practical success herein was as good as that of his neighbours. He made an exceptionally good orchard, waging constant and exterminat ing warfare against the caterpillars. " I lay down the general proposition," he once said, " that no man who harbours cater pillars has any moral right to apples that each grower should be required to make his choice between them." He had tine success in drainage, and practically established the value of irrigation on a small scale. He made it clear that he could make farming reasonably and steadily profitable. We shall have occasion hereafter to speak at some length of Mr. Greeley as the author of books, and there to make special mention of the volume entitled " What I Know of Farming." It will suffice here to say that the essays which compose the work were originally contributed, in weekly installments to a public journal, under the heading which forms the title of the volume. About this time a vast deal of game was made of Mr. Greeley by the wits and wags of the press in all parts of the country. Scarcely a journal appeared that did not have some jest at his expense. One, I recollect, gravely asserted that Horace Greeley preferred the hydraulic ram to the Merino. Another asserted that for the cultivation of sardines he pre ferred uplands to lowlands. Still another asseverated that he undoubtedly produced the best turnips in the United States, and at the trifling cost of two dollars and eighty-seven cents apiece. There was scarcely an absurdity, indeed, but he was charged withal, and it may well be doubted whether any other topic ever served for so many newspaperial jests as Mr. Gree- ley s "What I Know of Farming." Singularly enough, not a few persons received these jokes as solemn facts; and it may safely be affirmed that there are to this day thousands of American citizens who think that Mr. Greeley, instead of the reasonably successful farmer he was, was in that regard only fit to be laughed at. The effect of these constant jests upon Mr. Greeley was sometimes extremely laughable. The good wit or the passable waggery were amusing to him; but when he received letters 25 386 JJFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. propounding preposterous inquiries, as he sometimes did, he manifested less amiability. In truth, as we shall presently see, the essays which were made the cause of so much mirth and so much unintended misrepresentation, came to form a volume of exceeding practical value to farmers, and a notable illustra tion of Mr. Greeley s hearty devotion to the elevation of Labour and the welfare of the people. CHAPTEE XXII. THE WAR OF THE REBELLION BEGUN. The Election of Abraham Lincoln Made a Pretext for War Mr. Greeley s Opinion upon the Right of Secession He Demands a Vote of the South ern People, Expressing a Willingness to Abide by the Result A Reply to Mr. Thurlow Weed s Assertion that Mr. Greeley was a Secessionist A Candidate for United State Senator The Tribune During the Early Part of the War "On To Richmond !" Mr. Fitz Henry Warren s Washington Letters The Washington Extemporaneous Club of Critics The Defeat of Bull Run Its Cause Mr. Greeley "Stampeded" Messrs. Dana and Warren Retire from The Tribune Secretary Stanton His Letter to Mr. Greeley Organizes Victory for the Union Arms The Policy of The Tribune. SUCH, as has been described, was the home life of Horace Greeley, such, as has been related, were his labours on the Chappaqua farm. But it is not to be supposed that his ser vices in behalf of the country were any less constant, or his work any less severe, after he came in possession of his farm than before. Though his life was ever a busy one, he probably performed more and more various labours during the last twelve years of it than ever before fell to the lot of one man. The election of Abraham Lincoln in November, 1860, was made a pretext for civil war. The political leaders of the South had quite generally adopted two erroneous doctrines by which they were easily led to sanction a war against the Union. One of these erroneous doctrines was that which made the State paramount to the Republic not only as respects the domestic affairs of the commonwealth, but in all respects. The other was a belief in the political propriety and in the moral ity of human slavery. These doctrines made secession from the Union an easy matter with those who believed in them. They readily found in the election of an anti-slavery President a pretext for war. It is to be observed that the people of the whole republic (387) 388 LIFE OK HORACE GREELEY. were in one sense responsible for the terrible civil war of 1861-65. Slavery was not the cause of more unhappiness to the blacks than of utter demoralization to the whites. Nor were its effects worse in the often manifested barbarism of Southern politicians than in the cringing cowardice of many politicians of the North, these being held as representative of Northern sentiment generally. And not without much show of reason. A half century before the war, the nation, largely through the influence of Henry Clay, had declined to settle the question of slavery extension, but had " compromised " instead. Some twelve years afterwards, again largely through the same influence, the republic had failed to settle the question of nul lification, preferring to creep its way out of the difficulty through a " compromise." And less than twenty years after this, still again largely through the same influence, even a more humiliating "compromise" than either of the others was effected. We were, therefore, a nation of slaveholders and apologists of slavery. When the history of the times and measures to which I here refer shall be written, with truth and fulness, it will be seen that the influence of Henry Clay was more unfortunate than that of Mr. Calhoun, whilst his genius was far less lofty and admirable. The compromises which gave Henry Clay the sobriquet of " The Great Pacificator " were of incalculable detriment to the republic, and one of the most potential causes of our costly and bloody civil war. They made half the nation devoted to iniquity, the other half to iniquity and trifling. Hence it was no difficult matter for the adherents of slavery to make the election of an anti-slavery President a plausible pretext for insurrection. They claimed that such an election was an abridgement of their rights, or would necessarily so result. And they asserted that, failing to secure their rights within the Union, it was their duty to secede from it. They had plausible arguments in favour both of slavery and of seces sion in the political history of the country; whilst in behalf of secession they made powerful appeals to the people with the argument of natural rights, the same upon which our revo- ution had been based and independence achieved. There was HORACE WHITE, The Chicago Tribune. f DR. CHARLF3 H. RAY, Late of the F ^ening Post. SECESSION. 389 in all this subtle sophistry, most preposterous assumption of premises; but the conduct of the nation upon the subject of slavery had been such that the reasonings of secessionists had great apparent force. If they made the worse appear the better reason we of the North had given them the best argu ments they were able to use on one branch of the subject. By our cowardly compromises we had actually placed slavery among our great and glorious " free institutions." The election of Abraham Lincoln was a demonstration that the North did not sanction slavery. Up to that time the North had been grossly deceived on this subject. The people had all the time been betrayed by the politicians; and, chiefly on ac count of the powerful despotism of party, had been unable to make their true sentiments known. "Uncle Tom s Cabin " was scarcely more of an argument against slavery than it was an embodiment of preponderating Northern sentiment. The terrible mistake of the South was in supposing that the politi cians, instead of Mrs. Stowe and the abolitionists, were representative of the North. Nevertheless, neither Mr. Lincoln nor the Eepublican party thought of any unlawful or even extreme measure against sla very. It was proposed by him and his adherents that it should be no further extended. This was all. There was no thought of interference by the national government in the policy of the Republicans. They were anti-slavery, but they were not destructives. In the election of Mr. Lincoln, therefore, the South had no cause but only a pretext for secession and resulting war. He and his party were blameless; secession wholly at fault. The former, when war came, were altogether in the right; the latter was wholly in the wrong. The fearful responsibility of the terrible contest must, therefore, be placed with the seces sionists. And, though they were not sustained at first by the general public of the South, it must be confessed they conducted their cause with consummate skill, and gave it great apparent strength even from the beginning. It is not improbable they would have given it irresistible power, or power which could 390 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. not have been resisted by the administration of President Lincoln, but for the course pursued by Horace Greeley. Mr. Thurlow Weed, in his " Recollections of Horace Gree ley," says, 1 "We both supported Mr. Lincoln warmly, but after his election and during the war collisions and antagon isms placed a great gulf between us. He was radical, and I was conservative. He was in favour of secession and I against it. He was in favour of peace, while I urged a vigorous prosecution of the war." The statements of active politicians may always be carefully examined before unbounded trust can be safely placed in them. Mr. Weed is perfectly correct in saying that a great gulf had been placed between him and Mr. Greeley. The "collisions and antagonisms" which formed the gulf were not created, however, after Mr. Lincoln s election and during the war. Mr. Greeley s famous letter dissolving the firm of "Seward, Weed, and Greeley" written Novem ber 11, 1854 was much of a "collision," and the "antag onism " of the last two of the old firm at the Chicago Convention of 1860 forms a notable event in our political history. Mr. Weed, in placing his "gulf," perpetrates a lamentable anachronism. He proceeds to say that Mr. Greeley was in favour of seces sion, while he (Mr. Weed) opposed it. This testimony may be regarded as ample upon Mr. Weed s position upon this ques tion, but is far from conclusive as to Mr. Greeley s sentiments. We may generously allow Mr. Weed to speak for himself upon this and other topics; and justly demand a like privilege for Mr. Greeley. It is exceedingly painful for me to come into point- blank contradiction with a gentleman so eminent as Mr. Thurlow Weed ; but it is not true that Mr. Greeley was in favour of secession. On the contrary, he was wholly opposed to it, and believed the people of the South were opposed to it. So strongly was he of the opinion that the people of the South were opposed to it, that he expressed a willingness to abide by their fair vote upon the subject. And he demanded that such The Galaxy magazine, March, 1873. REPLY TO THURLOW WEED. 391 a vote should be had, as due alike to the people of the South and of the North. ; We dare the Fire-eaters," said he, "to submit the question of Secession or no Secession to the popular vote of their own people. They will be badly beaten in every State but South Carolina, and probably beaten in her popular vote also." This was in November, 1860. In the same con nexion he said : " If the People (not the swashy politicians) shall ever deliberately vote themselves out of the Union, we shall be in favour of letting them go in peace." They would, he believed, do no such thing; and he instanced contests of the kind in Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, wherein Secession had been overwhelmingly defeated by the people. So confident was he that the people of the South, if allowed to vote upon the subject, "none being coerced nor intimidated," would con demn disunion, that he could not as an honest man fail to express a willingness to abide by the result, whatever it might be. And for this he is charged with being in favour of seces sion! It would be no less preposterous to assert that he was in favour of the verdict against him in the Fenimore Cooper libel-suit, of which the history has heretofore in this work been related. Mr. G-reeley, we thus see, in direct conflict with Mr. Weed s assertion, was not only opposed to Secession, but firmly be lieved the people of the South were opposed to it. But because he was willing to abide by their uncoerced, unintimi- dated judgment upon the subject, we are told that he was " in favour of Secession." An asseveration more unjust or illogical could not well be imagined. Mr. Greeley judged it wise not to become un-republican in his arguments against traitorous Secession. He did not deny at this exciting epoch in our history the Eight of Revolution, lie but related an account of his own history from the time of the beginning of secession when, in May, 1862, he said: "We have steadfastly affirmed and upheld Mr. Jefferson s doctrine, embodied in the Declaration of American Independence, of the Eight of Eevolution. We have insisted that where this right is asserted, and its exercise is properly attempted, it ought not to be necessary to subject all concerned to the woes 392 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEF. and horrors of civil war. In other words, what one party has a right to do, another can have no right to resist." But he did not confound the Right of Revolution with that treasona ble Secession which brought on our civil war. This he characterized as the " violent, terrorist, outrageous proceeding of Southern Jacobins." In his view, the claim that Secession was an exercise of the Right of Revolution was a monstrous pretense. And we find him condemning Secession in The Tribune, in June, 1862, in the most unmistakable terms: We utterly deny, repudiate, and condemn the pretended Right of Seces sion. No such right is known to our Federal Constitution, nor, in fact, to any civilized framework of government. No such right was reserved, or supposed to be reserved, when the States ratified or adopted the Federal Constitution. We do not believe that a mere majority of a community may, in disregard of all existing forms, upset an existing government and put one of their choice in its place. We do not believe the whole population we will say of Nantucket or Staten Island have a right, moved by a pros pect of unlimited gains by smuggling to the main land, to break off from the Union and annex their island to Great Britain or set up for themselves. We do not believe a nation is, like a mob or mass-meeting, to be dispersed by a thunder-shower or a steam fire-engine playing upon it. The truth is, Horace Greeley s arguments, before the out break of hostilities and during the early period of the war, in behalf of the Right of Revolution, so far from showing that he was " in favour of Secession " not only prove the contrary, as we have seen, but are also a demonstration of his superior sagacity, foresight, statesmanship. For consider the situation : The closing months of President Buchanan s administration were not characterised by any vigorous policy against the threatened insurrection. Members of his Cabinet greatly assisted the disunion movement; and he himself could find no authority in the Constitution empowering him to save the Union by force of arms. He could not, he said, " coerce a State." This was but one way of saying that a State is para mount to the Nation. It was a virtual recognition of Secession. President Lincoln entered upon his duties, therefore, with the hands of the Executive Department tied. Pacification, through compromise, was again attempted. The insurrection was far better prepared for war than the republic. It was wise to do CANDIDATE FOB SENATOR. 393 what could honourably be done to have the insurrectionists think there would be no war. Who could do this more effect ually than Horace Greeley, through that journal which was regarded as most of all representative of Northern sentiment? How could he possibly perform the great and delicate duty, more wisely than by upholding the Right of Revolution? If we fairly consider the situation we shall not fail to be convinced that by no possibility could Mr. Greeley have done more to enable the government to save the republic than by giving the government time to make ready for the war which was inevi table. But for this, the insurrectionists would have captured Washington and made themselves masters, de facto, of the Federal government, that of the Union becoming a government on horseback, unable, perhaps, ever to resume its lawful powers. That Horace Greeley s far-seeing efforts in prevention of a catastrophe so direful should have subjected him to obloquy, to cruel misrepresentation on the part of careless thinkers and heated politicians, it is not difficult to understand. That Mr. Thurlow Weed should undertake to add to the obloquy and perpetuate the misrepresentation must be regarded as a proof of singular carelessness or uncommon malignity worthy of the severest rebuke. In the early part of 1861, Mr. Greeley became a candidate before the Republican caucus of the New York Legislature for United States Senator. His competitor was Mr. William M. Evarts, but the contest was in reality one between the Seward and Weed wing of the party in the State and the Greeley wing. There was a great deal of excitement in the party upon the subject, and especially among " party managers." There has never been, perhaps, so excited a Senatorial contest in New York. Albany, the Capital, swarmed with politicians, though Mr. Greeley himself did not go near. He quietly pursued his business, as though nothing unusual were going on. Mr. Weed was in Albany, and had to use all his great sagacity and political resource in order to win this " return match " with Mr. Greeley. He only succeeded so far as to defeat Mr. Greeley by consenting to the defeat of Mr. Evarts. The Hon. Ira Harris, who had received a few votes from the commence- 394 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. ment, was nominated on the tenth ballot. Mr. Weed was present in the Capitol, and managed the contest with all his old vigour, imperturbability, and adroitness. At his com mand, the Evarts men marched over to Judge Harris in full force and with military precision. Mr. Weed was among those who afterwards came to regret the election of Judge Harris. Adroit political gamesters no doubt have such regrets upon their consciences more frequently than they confess them. The course of The Tribune during the early part of the actual conflict of arms was notable for a vehement advocacy of offensive prosecution of the war. "Forward to Eichmond!" was a phrase originating with The Tribune but not with Mr. Greeley. If my memory is not at fault, it originated with Mr. Fitz Henry Warren, associate editor of The Tribune, and at the time that journal s "own correspondent" at the Na tional Capital. Mr. Warren s letters of this period were remarkable productions, remarkable on account of their caus tic criticisms on the conduct of affairs, of public men, their brilliant style, their stinging wit, their independent spirit. If so magnificent a series of letters has appeared in modern journalism their author has escaped deserved reputation. Mr. Warren had apartments on Pennsylvania avenue, oppo site Willards Hotel, only a short distance from " Newspaper Row " on Fourteenth street. Here congregated, almost every evening, not a few persons, then and since highly distin guished in the civil or military history of the republic. They formed from evening to evening a sort of extemporane ous club of critics. On account of their free expressions of opinion touching the illustrious General then in command of the Union army, and whose mind they thought had become impaired through great age, they were often called " the cuss- ers " by irreverent reporters. Here assembled Senators of the United States, Representatives in Congress, many eminent men of the land visiting Washington. There was general acquiescence in Mr. Warren s opinion that the war ought to be short and sharp ; and especially was it generally felt that the confederate capital ought not to be allowed to remain at "ON TO RICHMOND." 395 Richmond. "On to Richmond!" was, therefore, a popular phrase with the extemporaneous Club. It frequently ap peared in The Tribune, and was made the basis of no little obloquy for Mr. Greeley after the defeat of the Battle of Bull Run in July, 1861. In truth, this disaster was the result of that very military incapacity which Mr. Warren and The Tribune had criticised. To the criticisms made upon The Tribune for its military incapacity as manifested in the "on to Richmond" strategy, Mr. Greeley replied in the famous article "Just Once," as follows : An individual s griefs or wrongs may be of little account to others; but when the gravest public interests are imperilled through personal attacks, and the coarsest imputations of base motives, the assailed, however hum ble, owes duties to others which cannot be disregarded. I propose here to refute months of persistent and envenomed defamation by the statement of a few facts. I am charged with having opposed the selection of Governor Seward for a place in President Lincoln s cabinet. That is utterly, absolutely false, the President himself being my witness. I might call many others, but one such is sufficient. I am charged with what is called " opposing the administration " because of that selection, and various paragraphs which have from time to time appeared in The Tribune are quoted to sustain this inculpation. The simple fact that not one of those paragraphs was either written or in any wise suggested or prompted by me suffices for that charge. It is true I have no desire to conceal or belittle it that my ideas as to the general con duct of the war for the Union are those repeatedly expressed by myself and others through The Tribune, and of course are not those on which the conduct of that war has been based. It is true that I hold and have urged that this war can not, must not, be a long one ; that it must be prosecuted with the utmost energy, promptness, and vigour, or it will prove a failure; that every week s flying of the secession flag defiantly within a day s walk of Washington renders the suppression of the revolt more difficult, if not doubtful. It is true that I think a government that begins the work of putting down a rebellion by forming " camps of instruction," or any thing of that sort, is likely to make a very long job of it. It is true that I think our obvious policy, under the circumstances, would have been to be cour teous and long-suffering towards foreign powers, but resolute and ready in our dealings with armed rebels ; and it seems to me that the opposite course has been taken. Put the watchword, "Forward to Richmond," is not mine, nor any thing of like import. I wish to evade no responsibility, but to repel a personal aspersion. So with regard to the late article urg ing a change in the cabinet. While I know that some of the best material 396 LIFE OF HOKACT GEEELEY. in the country enters into the composition of that cabinet, I yet feel that changes might be made therein with advantage to the public service. Yet I did not write, and I did not intend to have published, the article calling for a change of cabinet, which only appeared through a misapprehension. I shrunk from printing it in part because any good effect it might have was likely to be neutralized by the very course which has been taken that of assailing me as its supposed author. I have no desire in the premises but that what is best for the country shall be done. If the public judge that this great end an energetic and successful prosecution of the war will be most surely subserved by retain- ing the cabinet as it is, I acquiesce in that decision. The end being secured, the means are to me utterly indifferent. I wish to be distinctly understood as not seeking to be relieved from any responsibility for urging the advance of the Union grand army into Vir ginia, though the precise phrase, "Forward to Richmond!" is not mine, and I would have preferred not to iterate it. I thought that that army, one hundred thousand strong, might have been in the rebel capital on or before the 20th instant, while I felt that there were urgent reasons why it should be there if possible. And now, if any one imagine that I, or any one connected with The Tribune, ever commended or imagined such strategy as the launching of barely thirty thousand of the one hundred thousand Union volunteers within fifty miles of Washington against ninety thousand rebels enveloped in a labyrinth of strong intrenchments and unreconnoitred masked batteries, the demonstration would be lost on his closed ear. But I will not dwell on this. If I am needed as a scape-goat for all the military blunders of the last month, so be it. Individuals must die that the nation may live. If I can serve her best in that capacity, I do not shrink from the ordeal. Henceforth I bar all criticism in these columns on army movements, past or future, unless somebody should undertake to prove that General Patterson is a wise and brave commander. He seems to have none to speak his praises; so, if there is any thing to be said in his behalf, I will make an exception in his favour. Other than this, the subject is closed and sealed. Correspondents and reporters may state facts, but must for bear comments. I know that there is truth that yet needs be uttered on this subject, but this paper has donelts full share all that it ought, and perhaps more than it could afford to do and henceforth stands back for others. Only I beg it to be understood once for all that if less than half the Union armies directly at hand are hurled against all the rebel forces that could be concentrated more than double their number on ground specially chosen and strongly fortified by the traitors, The Tribune does not approve and should not be held responsible for such madness. Say what you will of the past, but remember this for the future, though we keep silence. Henceforth it shall be The Tribune s sole vocation to rouse and animate the American people for the terrible ordeal which has befallen them. The great republic eminently needs the utmost exertions of every loyal BULL EUN. 397 heart and hand. We have tried to serve her by exposing breakers ahead and around her ; henceforth be it ours to strengthen, in all possible ways, the hands of those whose unenviable duty it is to pilot her through them. If more good is thus to be done, let us not repine that some truth must be withheld for a calmer moment, and for less troubled ears. The journal which is made the conduit of the most violent of these per sonal assaults on me attributes the course of The Tribune to resentment " against those who have ever committed the inexpiable offense of thwart ing Mr. Greeley s raging and unsatiated thirst for office." I think this justifies me in saying that there is no office in the gift of the government or of the people which I either hope, wish, or expect ever to hold. I certainly shall not parade myself as declining places that are not offered for my acceptance ; but I am sure the President has always known that I desired no office at his hands ; and this, not through any violation of my rule above stated, but through the report of mutual and influential friends, who at various times volunteered to ask me if I would take any place whatever under the government, and were uniformly and conclu sively assured that I would not. Now let the wolves howl on. I do not believe they can goad me into another personal notice of their ravings. HORACE GREELEY. July 24, 1861. I have quoted thus fully from Mr. Greeley upon this subject not only to show that his policy, the policy of The Tribune, of "Forward to Richmond" was "Forward " and not "For ward and Back;" but also that, in connexion with Mr. Gree ley s statement, I may state the real cause of the defeat. General McDowell, it will be recollected, moved against the enemy from Arlington Heights. General Patterson, farther up the Potomac, with the army of the Shenandoah, had it in charge to keep the rebel General Joseph E. Johnston from reenforcing General Beauregard. Lieutenant-General Win- field Scott, in command of the Union armies, thrice sent orders, as he supposed, to Patterson to keep Johnston near the Shenan doah by hostile demonstrations, and, if necessary, by engaging him. General Scott entrusted all these orders to a single aide, of his own name, and related to him by marriage. They were purposely withheld, that Johnston might get away from Pat terson. It was this treason in General Scott s military family which was the direct cause of the defeat of the Union army at Bull Run. For, as is well known, the victory was with Gen eral McDowell, in immediate command of the Unionists, till 398 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. these reinforcements of Beauregard changed the result. That General Scott would not have trusted such important order to a single person, had age not impaired his faculties, will not be disputed. In shame and sorrow, he at once sought to be relieved, whilst his culpable aide left America, and tried to drown his compunctions, or escape punishment, in the gayeties of the French Capital. But for this lamentable want of vigilance on the part of the Commander-in-Chief, Bull Run would have been a victory, and On to Richmond " eulogised as the finest strategy. The cause of the failure of Patterson being unknown until long afterwards, he and others suffered greatly in consequence. But with the public Horace Greeley was made to play the character of the chief scape-goat. But even had there been no treachery at headquarters, the assaults upon Mr. Greeley and The Tribune were still inex cusably unjust. Though General Patterson must be relieved of the blame which was cast upon him, by Mr. Greeley as well as by others, the fault should not have been placed upon The Tribune. The Union army was strong in numbers, en thusiastic, brave. It was in all respects superior to its enemy. Three years afterwards, the country universally applauded General Grant s dispatch which said " I shall fight it out on this line if it takes all Summer," though he failed to fight it out on that line, and though it took much more than all Sum mer. This famous saying cost the country immensely more life and treasure than the other: and, based upon a more thorough knowledge of our own and the enemy s resources, and ot the capacity of our troops to march and fight, it had no foundation but boastfuluess, with the object to deceive. It was, therefore, well. But "On to Richmond" in 1861 was wiser than Grant s dispatch of 1864. Had Grant not been more vigilant and capable than Scott had become in 1861, he would still be fighting it out, or else peace would have been proclaimed over the ruins of the Republic, and in a terrible calamity to mankind. Had " On to Richmond " been fought for as the other saying, the rebellion would then and there have suffered utter discomfiture. SIMON CAMERON. 399 But at whatsoever conclusions we may arrive upon this sub ject, it is certain that the result of the battle of Bull Run was received with general consternation bj the North. There was, if I may so speak, a brief popular panic. One consequence of this was, to use a word whereby gentlemen in the War Department described the situation of General Rosecrans after the battle of Chickamauga, Mr. Greeley was u stampeded." The national calamity overpowered him for the time being. He became ill, and was for some time dangerously sick. We have already seen what he wrote two days after the battle. Mr. Dana and Mr. Warren, unwilling to acknowledge that any blame whatever attached to The Tribune, indignant that it should even so far recognize the popular clamour as to change its policy, retired from the paper. I suppose both those gentlemen have never ceased to think that herein and not in "On to Richmond," did The Tribune err. In truth they were in the right: but in view of the military disaster and the national consternation, it was wise in Mr. Greeley to bend to the storm. During the early part of the rebellion, Mr. Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, was Secretary of War. He was given this position in President Lincoln s cabinet, contrary to the Presi dent s judgment, but in fulfillment of certain pledges made without authority by Mr. Lincoln s friends at the Chicago convention. There was no one man with eminent position in American affairs, who had done so much, perhaps, to corrupt politics as Mr. Cameron. He was once described in a speech by a distinguished Representative in Congress as a man of a single virtue and a thousand crimes. That Mr. Lincoln was annoyed by his presence in the Cabinet there is no doubt. That he conducted the War Office in the interest of contractors and for the furtherance of jobs there will be few to dispute. A more unfortunate head for the department of war could not easily have been selected. President Lincoln endured his incapacity so long as even his sublime good-nature could hold out, and then banished him to St. Petersburg, where he per formed the easy functions of a minister at a friendly court. It was earlv in 186^ that Mr. Cameron retired from the War 400 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Department. He was succeeded by Mr. Edwin M. Stan ton, at that time not generally known throughout the country, but whose name soon became illustrious as that of the great War Secretary. Mr. Stanton had ever been in politics a member of the Democratic party. His appointment was intended not only as a recognition of his talents and patriotism but as a manifestation also of a determination on the part of the Presi dent to give his administration a non-partisan character. And so it was gracefully accepted by a large portion of the Demo cratic party, and by the public generally. The military operations of the year 1861 had been, upon the whole, disastrous to the Union cause. There had also appeared on the part of the government a want of earnestness; a kind of good-natured attempt to carry on the war on peace princi ples. General Butler and General Fr6mont had not been sustained in certain measures of a vigorous nature adopted by them; and, generally, we seemed to be afraid that the rebellion might be too much hurt. The treatment it received was notably mild and tender. In consequence whereof the people of the North began to be not a little disheartened. That much of the responsibility for the unfortunate situation was justly chargeable to incapacity in the management of the Department of War, there can be few to question. Mr. Cameron gave a great deal more attention to contracts for the most ephemeral of army hats than he gave to ways and means for the prosecution of the war. He acted very much as though the office of Secretary of War were identical with that of a depot quartermaster or a commissary of subsistence. Many commenced shrewdly to surmise that we were engaged not in a war, but a speculation. I do not impeach the civil capacity of Simon Cameron; but it seems as though it were hardly possible a more unfortunate selection could have been made for the head of the War Department in a time of war. The appointment of Mr. Stanton instantly changed and invigorated the national heart, and evoked the general patriot ism to renewed fervour. Mr. Greeley, who had been greatly depressed in spirit for many months, at once resumed his wonted ardour, and again The Tribune s voice rang loud and ABRAHAM LINCOLN. EDWIN M. STANTON. EDWIN M. STANTON. 401 clear like a trumpet sounding the charge. The Tribune of February 18, 1862, said: While every honest heart rises in gratitude to God for the victories which afford so glorious a guaranty of the national salvation, let it not be forgotten that it is to Edwin M. Stanton, more than to any other indi vidual, that these auspicious events are now due. Our generals in the field have done their duty with energy and courage : our officers, and with them the noble democracy of the ranks, have proved themselves worthy sons of the Republic ; but it is by the impassionate soul, the sleepless will, and the great practical talents of the Secretary of War, that the vast power of the United States has now been hurled upon their treacherous and perjured enemies to crush them to powder. Let no man imagine that we exalt this great statesman above his deserts, or that we would detract an iota from that share of glory which in this momentous crisis belongs to every faithful participator in the events of this war. But we cannot overlook the fact that whereas but the other day all was doubt, distrust, and uncertainty ; the nation despairing almost of its own restoration to life ; Congress the scene of bitter imputations and unsatisfactory apolo gies ; the army sluggish, discontented, and decaying ; and the abyss of ruin and disgrace yawning to swallow us now all is inspiration, merri ment, victory, and confidence. We seem to have passed into another state of existence, to live with distinct purposes, and to feel the certainty of their realization. To which Secretary Stanton replied: WASHINGTON, February 19, 1862. To the Editor of The New- York Tribune : SIR: I cannot suffer undue merit to be ascribed to my official action. The glory of our recent victories belongs to our gallant officers and soldiers that fought the battles. No share of it belongs to me. Much has lately been said of military combinations and organizing victory. I hear such phrases with apprehension. They commenced in infidel France with the Italian campaign, and resulted in Waterloo. Who can organize victory? Who can combine the elements of success on the battle-field? We owe our recent victories to the Spirit of the Lord, thai moved our soldiers to rush into battle, and filled the hearts of our enemies with terror and dismay. The inspiration that conquered in battle was in the hearts of the soldiers, and from on high: and wherever there is the same inspiration there will be the same results. Patriotic spirit, with resolute courage in officers and men, is a military combination that never failed. We may well rejoice at the recent victories, for they teach us that battles are to be won now and by us in the same and only manner that they were ever won by any people or in any age, since the days of Joshua, by boldly pursuing and striking the foe. What, under the blessing of Providence, I 26 402 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. conceive to be the true organization of victory and military combination to end this war, was declared in a few words by General Grant s message to General Buckner " I propose to move immediately on your works. " Yours, truly, EDWIN M. STANTON. The Tribune, in response, spoke of Mr. Stanton s modesty and unaffected religious feeling. It admitted that he was riijht, too. The favourable change in our aifairs was due to O d God and the people alone. Nevertheless, it said, if Mr. Stan- ton has not organized victory, he has at least unwound it and set it in motion. It might almost seem that the appointment of Mr. Stanton was a providential event. Mr. Lincoln was a man of peace. Mr. Stanton might almost be described as the incarnation of war. He was Mars modernized. No man was ever more terribly in earnest. His acts were sometimes harsh, even grossly unjust in individual cases; but harshness had become a necessity, and his injustice to persons rarely if ever resulted in ill to the country. No man ever braved unfavourable opinion as Secretary Stanton braved it. I believe he would cheerfully have welcomed obloquy if thereby be could have banished the paltering of politicians and aided to save his country. Before his dominating spirit that of President Lincoln bowed with a feeling akin to awe. By his resistless energy and sleepless vigilance the army was organized for victory. Cheering triumphs speedily followed his accession to office. The great crime of trifling was no more committed. Thoughtful men saw that the preservation of the Union through the defeat of the rebellion had become only a question of time. In this happy improvement in the posture of aifairs, Mr. Greeley did not substantially change the policy of The Tribune in respect to criticism of the conduct of the war from that marked out in the article "Just Once," already quoted. The government was sustained with but little qualification and less unfriendly criticism. Scarcely any fault was found with what was done. It advocated the doing of things before they were done, but without any exhibition of unseemly temper or manifestation of croaking complaint. Aside from victories in the field, the two events of the war which coincided best with EDWIN M. ST ANTON. the policy of The Tribune, and were the most gratifying to Mr, Greeley, were the appointment of Edwin M. Stan ton as Secretary of "War and the Proclamation of Emancipation. The wisdom and patriotism of that policy could hardly be more conclusively demonstrated, since these were the two deeds which, through the action of government, had most to do in bringing the terrible contest to an issue favourable to the republic and the cause of human progress. CHAPTEE XXIII. THE WAR OF THE REBELLION CONTINUES. Correspondence with President Lincoln The Mob of 1863 Mr. Lincoln Re-elected President General McClellan the Opposing Candidate General Fremont and Montgomery Blair Withdraw Mr. Greeley s "Peace Negotiations" The Rebel "Negotiators" The Military Cam paigns of 1864-65 under Grant and Sherman Victory The Death of President Lincoln Horace Greeley s Opinion of Him as a War Presi dent President Andrew Johnson Mr. Greeley Undertakes to Bring About a Reconciliation Between the President and Congress The President Impeached Failure. BUT so great was the rebellion, so long had the nation trifled with its cause, and then on this account with its armed defend ers, that even the most energetic and wise and unselfish of war secretaries, a government proclaiming freedom to millions of slaves, sustained by a vast and brave army of Volunteers, were unable to bring the conflict to a speedy termination. Indeed, there was great concern among the most thoughtful friends of the republic, that President Lincoln would so long remain tramelled by old precedents and regard for technicalities, that it might become too late to save the nation, even by the loftiest deeds of justice and the most heroic fighting. In demanding emancipation, the arming of the blacks, and this with pro found est earnestness, Horace Greeley truly represented the great bulk of the reflecting people of the North, and at the same time pointed out the means of national preservation. There was scarcely a day that he did not urge emancipation upon the administration, and the country. But on the 19th of August, 1862, he addressed a letter, through the columns of The Tribune, to President Lincoln, which had immediate effect. It was entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," and was one of the most powerful essays which ever came from the pen of Horace Greeley; one of the most unanswerable argu ments and irresistable appeals which the human mind ever (404) . "THE PRAYER OF TWENTY MILLIONS." 405 conceived or expressed. The concluding portions of this letter were as follows: On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinter ested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion, and at the same time up hold its inciting cause, are preposterous and futile that the Rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigour that army officers, who remain to this day devoted to Slavery, can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union and that every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union. I appeal to the testimony of your Ambassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slaveholding, Slavery- upholding interest, is not the perplexity, the despair, of statesmen of all parties; and be admonished by the general answer! I close as I began, with the statements that what an immense majority of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more especially of the Confiscation Act. That act gives freedom to the slaves of Rebels coming within our lines, or whom those lines may at any time inclose we ask you to render it due obedience by publicly requiring all your subordinates to recognize and obey it. The Rebels are everywhere using the late anti-negro riots in the North as they have long used your officers treatment of negroes in the South to convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope from a Union success that we mean in that case to sell them into a bitter bondage to defray the cost of the war. Let them impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and cred ulous bondmen, and the Union will never be restored never. We can not conquer ten million of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully aided by Northern sympathizers and European allies. We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers, and choppers, from the Blacks of the South whether we allow them to fight for us or not or we shall be baffled and repelled. As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but that of prin ciple and honour, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is indispensible not only to the existence of our country, but to the well- being of mankind, I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal obedience to the law of the land. Yours, HORACE GREELEY. This letter made a profound impression upon the country, and at once. It also made a profound impression upon Presi dent Lincoln. He perceived that it merited consideration and response. He replied to it as follows: 406 LITE OF HOKACE GKEELEY. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 22, 1862. HON. HOBACE GREELET: DEAR SIR: I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself through The New- York Tribune. If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in defer ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the coloured race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors ; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, every where, could be free. Tours, A. LINCOLN. To which Mr. Greeley speedily responded : To THE PRESIDENT: DEAR SIR: Although I did not anticipate nor seek any reply to my former letter unless through your official acts, I thank you for having accorded one, since it enables me to say explicitly that nothing was further from my thought than to impeach in any manner the sincerity or the inten sity of your devotion to the saving of the Union. I never doubted, and have no friend who doubts, that you desire, before and above all else, to re establish the now derided authority, and vindicate the territorial integrity, of the Republic. I intended to raise only this question, Do you propose to do this by recognizing, obeying, and enforcing the laws, or by ignoring, disregarding, and in effect defying them ? I stand upon the law of the land. The humblest has a clear right to LETTER TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 407 invoke its protection and support against even the highest. That law in strict accordance with the law of nations, of Nature, and of God declares that every traitor now engaged in the infernal work of destroying our country has forfeited thereby all claim or colour of right lawfully to hold human beings in slavery. I ask of you a clear and public recogni tion that this law is to be obeyed wherever the national authority is respected. I cite you to instances wherein men fleeing from bondage to traitors to the protection of our flag have been assaulted, wounded, and murdered by soldiers of the Union, unpunished and unrebuked by your General Commanding, to prove that it is your duty to take action in the premises, action that will cause the law to be proclaimed and obeyed wherever your authority or that of the Union is recognized as paramount. The Rebellion is strengthened, the national cause is imperilled, by every hour s delay to strike Treason this staggering blow. When Fremont proclaimed freedom to the slaves of rebels, you con strained him to modify his proclamation into rigid accordance with the terms of the existing law. It was your clear right to do so. 1 now ask of you conformity to the principle so sternly enforced upon him. I ask you to instruct your generals and commodores, that no loyal person certainly none willing to render service to the national cause is henceforth to be regarded as the slave of any traitor. While no rightful government was ever before assailed by so wanton and wicked a rebellion as that of the slaveholders against our national life, I am sure none ever before hesitated at so simple and primary an act of self defence, as to relieve those who would serve and save it from chattel servitude to those who are wading through seas of blood to subvert it. Future generations will with difficulty realize that there could have been hesitation on this point. Sixty years of general and boundless subserviency to the slave power do not adequately explain it. Mr. President, I beseech you to open your eyes to the fact that the devotees of slavery everywhere just, as much in Maryland as in Missis sippi, in Washington as in Richmond are to-day your enemies, and the implacable foes of every effort to re-establish the national authority by the discomfiture of its assailants. Their President is not Abraham Lincoln, but Jefferson Davis. You may draft them to serve in the war ; but they will only fight under the Rebel flag. There is not in New- York to-day a man who really believes in slavery, loves it, and desires its perpetuation, who heartily desires the crushing out of the Rebellion. He would much rather save the Republic by buying up and pensioning off its assailants. His "Union as it was" is a Union of which you were not President, and no one who truly wished freedom to all ever could be. If these are truths, Mr. President, they are surely of the gravest impor tance. You cannot safely approach the great and good end you so intently meditate by shutting your eyes to them. Your deadly foe is not blinded by any mist in which your eyes may be enveloped. He walks straight to his goal, knowing well his weak point, and most unwillingly betraying his fear that you too may see and take advantage of it. God grant that his apprehension may prove prophetic ! 4:08 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. That you may not unseasonably perceive these vital truths as they will shine forth on the pages of history, that they may be read by our chil dren irradiated by the glory of our national salvation, not rendered lurid by the blood-red glow of national conflagration and ruin, that you may promptly and practically realize that slavery is to be vanquished only by liberty, is the fervent and anxious prayer of Yours truly, HORACE GREELEY. NEW- YORK, August 24, 1862. Within one month from the publication of this letter in The Tribune, President Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Eman cipation. An act of greater beneficence or of graver responsibility history has rarely if ever recorded. Mr. Greeley did not over estimate its importance in cheering the hearts of the great body of anti-slavery people. There had been much in the course of the administration to cause the large and influential class here referred to to become despondent, at times almost to despair of the republic. If they had had that responsibility which was constantly weighing upon President Lincoln, they might not, indeed, have been as wisely cautious as he, but they would have been more carefully considerate of the character of their great acts than of their great words. The President was sure that, in his endeavours to save the Union, in the man ner marked out by his best judgment, he would be heartily sustained, though he might also be freely criticised, by anti- slavery men generally. He could not be certain of the effect a Proclamation of Emancipation might have upon many thousands who claimed to be friends of the Union, but who were not anti-slavery. Nor could he be certain of the advantage which might be taken, in the North, of such an extraordinary act, by disunionists in that section. Events justified the wisdom of Horace Greeley s policy and of President Lincoln s considerate caution. Emancipation called forth the most desperate efforts of the rebellion, and the irresistible power of a free Union. One of the most notable evidences of the desperation in which Emancipation placed the disunionists was afforded by the anti-draft, anti-negro riots which occurred in the city of New- York in July, 1863. It would appear that this destructive and bloody emeute was NEW-YORK RIOTS OF 1863. 409 the culmination of disunion desperation; that desperation, feared so much by President Lincoln, which was a logical result of Emancipation. The proclamation was followed by political disaster. In the elections which soon took place, there seemed to be little to encourage the Union cause. New York elected Mr. Horatio Seymour its Governor over a Union General by some 10,000 majority. Several other States which had voted for Mr. Lincoln in 1860, also now went against him. In the choice of Representatives in Congress, many Republicans were ousted and Democrats elected in place of them. Men began to say that Emancipation had been a mistake; that it was not sustained by the people, after all; that old prejudices, old party associations would belittle the sublimest act of the century and permit the republic to be lost; that in spite of right, reason, justice, the nation was not ready for freedom. These despondent citizens were not encouraged by notable mil itary successes. The darkest period of the war was that which followed Emancipation. Mr. Greeley says in his " American Conflict:" "Perhaps the very darkest days that the Republic ever saw were the ten which just preceded the -ith of July, 1863." No one can doubt the correctness of this judgment. It was the intense darkness which precedes the dawn. There was a certain weakness in the very strength of Emancipation the weakness of faith without works. The Unionists, gratified with the acknowledgement of the grand idea, preterinitted that grand work which was still necessary for its realization. In their desperation, the disunionists left no one thing undone which they could do, whether in war or in politics, and in both seemed to be making headway against the republic and eman cipation. It was not until they had made considerable progress and had imposed upon thousands of Union men, who were, however, not anti-slavery, that the irresistible power of Eman cipation became manifest. Unquestionably the New-York riots did very much to demonstrate the nature of the contest in which we were en gaged. After that terrible week there could be no mistake. And after that week, the fate of the rebellion was sealed. Its 410 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. complete suppression, and the vindication of the republic, through freedom, thenceforth was but a question of time. The pretext of this riot was the enforcement of the draft for soldiers which, in accordance with law, had been ordered by the government. The mob first assailed the building in which the drawing in one of the districts was taking place. The officers were dispersed, the building set on fire. Increasing in numbers, the rioters proceeded to commit acts of violence, arson, and bloodshed, which placed the city in general terror. The fearful work continued for four days, during which period property to the value of several millions was destroyed, and many murders, chiefly of blacks, committed under circum stances of savage atrocity. The office of The Tribune was attacked on the evening of the first day of the riot, the count ing-room entered, sacked, and set on fire, but energetic action on the part of the police drove off the mob, and thereafter, having procured arms and amunition in abundance, the office was able to take care of itself. It was constantly surrounded, however, by the surging, howling mob, which, unquestionably, thirsted even more for the blood of Horace Greeley than for that of the innocent negroes. Though Mr. Greeley was certainly in more danger than any white man in the city, whether of high or low degree, there was not, perhaps, in all the metropolis, a single individual who manifested more coolness than he. He related in The Tribune, not long afterwards, what occurred as to himself in these words: On the 13th of July, 1863 (the first-day of the Draft Riots in our city), the editor of The Tribune was visited in his office about midday by a devoted friend, who urged and entreated him to accompany the said friend to his home, a few miles distant. That friend assured him that he knew that the life of said editor was to be taken forthwith that it had been plotted and settled that he should be an early and certain victim of the ruffian mob then howling about The Tribune office, and inciting each other to the assault, which they actually made at dusk that night, when they smashed the windows, furniture, etc., and set fire to the building, but were promptly routed and expelled by the police. Riot, arson, and pillage were then rife in different sections of our city, of which the rebel inob appeared to have undisputed possession. The editor (who writes this) informed his friend that nothing would induce him to leave the city THE ANTI-DRAFT RIOT. 411 that he was where he had a right to be, and where he should remain. That friend, after exhausting remonstrance and entreaty, left him to his fate, not expecting to see him again. About five r. M. of that day, the editor, having finished his work at the office, went over to Windust s eating-house for his dinner, passing through the howling mob for nearly the entire distance, and recognized by several of them. Two friends accompanied him, but not at his invitation or suggestion. Neither of the three was armed. At Windust s dinner was ordered and eaten exactly as on other days, but in the largest room in the house, without a shadow of conceal ment or hiding of any kind. Dinner finished, the editor took a carriage and drove to his lodging, where he resumed writing for The Tribune, and continued it through the evening, sending down his copy to the office, and being visited thence by friends who informed him of the mob s assault, and the narrow escape of the building and contents from destruction. Remaining all night at his lodging, he returned next morning to the office (now being armed), saw from a window the mob howling in its front, hastily repair to the City Hall Park, there to listen to a harangue from Horatio Seymour, and remained there nearly to the close of the day (Tuesday), when he was finally induced to leave by the representation of the good and true soldier who commanded it as fortress, that he would prefer that the mob should not be provided with the extra inducement for assault which the known presence of Mr. Greeley in the building would afford. He returned to the office the next morning, though the first hack- man to whom he applied refused to let him enter his carriage; and he was in the office nearly throughout each day of that memorable week up to Friday evening, when he (as usual) took the Harlem cars for his home at Chappaqua, where he spent the Saturday, as he has done nearly every Saturday, save in winter, for the last fifteen years. In an article upon Horace Greeley, in Harper s Monthly Magazine for April, 1873, Mr. Junins Henri Browne, speaking of Mr. Greeley s courage during this trying week, says: After the riot had gotten well under way he had very little doubt he would be hanged to a lamp-post by the brutal and infuriated mob, and he had actually accepted death as his inevitable portion. Messenger after messenger, friend after friend, went to him to apprise him of his imminent peril, and were surprised to find him as cool as the summit of Mont Blanc. He had entire confidence in their statements, remarking, " Well, it doesn t make much difference. I ve done my work. I may as well be killed by the mob as die in my bed. Between now and next time is only a little while." The day it was expected The Tribune would be attacked, its employes, who had prepared for a desperate defense, spent several hours in trying to get him out of the office. His invariable reply was, "Never mind me, boys; I ll take care of myself." And amidst the distribution of revolvers, muskets, and hand-grenades, and the fitting of hose to- the steam-pipes, 4:12 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. the intrepid Horace sat clown to his desk to write editorials for the next morning s issue. It was only after several of the staff went to him, and urged him to quit the establishment for their sake, saying his remaining would do no good and merely imperil the office, that he consented to leave. He would do for The Tribune, the darling of his heart, what he would not do for himself. His final remonstrance was, " You might as well let me stay. If there s going to be any fun, I don t know why I shouldn t see it too." But at last lie was borne almost bodily into a car riage and driven off, still protesting against the proceeding as " devilish mean." It was characteristic of Mr. Greeley that he should be a non-combatant physically and a thorough gladiator intellectually. As his biographer has told us, he would not, when a boy, fight back ; but he would not run under any circumstances. If attacked, he would stand and take it. The child was father to the man. While the mob threatened to demolish The Tribune office, its chief, though not desirous of resisting, was bent upon staying by and meeting the worst. The Union having been able, through the endurance and gallantry of its armed defenders and the gracious favour of Almighty God, to repel the desperate assaults of the insurrec tionists consequent upon Emancipation, the people again began to resume some of their wonted habits. It was soon apparent that President Lincoln would be renoininated and, being renominated, would also be reelected. It was also well known to those acquainted with the opinions of Democratic politi cians that General George B. McClellan would be the candidate of the Democrats. Meantime, no little difference of opinion had grown up among the friends of the Union who had originally sustained Mr. Lincoln, which threatened to dismember the party in power. Seldom if ever in the whole history of the world has a statesman been placed in a more difficult position, one encom passed by such great, constant, and various perils, as President Lincoln. It might seem that he had enough to engage all the time and thought of one man, occupying the chief executive office, in the formidable rebellion which defiantly confronted the government. It might appear that he also had enough thus to occupy time and mind in the management of that singular obstruction to a vigorous prosecution of the war which at the time generally passed by the name of the Border- State policy, and in the nomenclature of wits as the water- MK. LINCOLN S RENOMINATION. 413 gruel policy. But in addition to these appalling difficulties by which he was surrounded, there were others even more annoying if not so great. In respect to the mode of conduct ing the war, his own party was divided, and this not only in general, but in detail. Many opposed the Border-State policy; many denounced the retention of prominent generals in im portant commands; many criticised the orders of different generals; many demanded the removal of certain Cabinet officers, and the reinstatement of certain military officers. Many of the ablest men of the Republican party were in undis guised hostility to the President, and some who had great influence with him were his secret enemies. There were but few, it was claimed, who were not alarmed lest the Union cause should be ruined through deference to the opinions of those whose opinions were entitled to the least consideration. These seemed to be always welcome to the Executive Mansion. The Radicals were allowed to dance attendance on the clerks and messengers in the ante-rooms. When the National Convention of the Republicans assembled at Baltimore, in 1864, Mr. Lincoln was renominated almost with unanimity. Missouri alone voted against him. And yet it may well be doubted whether one in ten of the earnest men in Congress was of this way of thinking. President Lincoln was extremely distasteful to a large majority of Congress, not only, but to many of the most prominent Republicans of the country. Among those who opposed bis renornination was Horace Greeley. He was herein in a very much larger party than is commonly supposed; but others, after renomination and reelection, covered up their previous records. Mr. Greeley published his to the world. If the inside political history of the war shall ever be written, it will make many revelations of a remarkable and exciting nature. It will be found, among other things, that Horace Greeley, in his opposition to Mi-. Lincoln, had the hearty endorsement of very many representa tive men of w T hom to this day it is not generally known that they were in the habit, in private, of denouncing President Lincoln s administration with scarcely less vehemence than they had denounced that of Mr. Buchanan. 414 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. The opposition of which I now speak was of men eminent for abilities, and sprang from an intense patriotism. They did not fear that the President s ultimate conclusions would be unwise, but that the country might be ruined before, in his imperturbable deliberation, he should reach conclusions; that the Union cause might be lost while he was making up his mind upon the ways and means best to preserve it. The ways and means he finally selected were those they had advocated; and while it seems probable the war might sooner have ended had he adopted them sooner, it is not impossible they would have been followed by temporary disaster, as was the case with emancipation. We can now clearly enough see that they were in the right in judgment, and that President Lincoln heartily agreed with them, differing from them only as to the best time when certain things should be done. The Democratic party knew perfectly well that there was division of counsel among the Republicans. This was mani fested in a variety of ways, notably by a convention of Eadicals at Cleveland, Ohio, which, in the latter part of May, 1864, nominated General Fr6mont for the Presidency, and General John Cochrane for the Yice-Presidency, and later, by a political manifesto from Senator Wade, of Ohio, and Eepreseiitative Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, in which the administration was severely criticised. Mr. Greeley heartily assented to many considerations urged by Messrs. Wade and Davis, but was glad that President Lincoln had not approved the reconstruction bill, the defeat of which was the basis of those gentlemen s animadversions. Henry Winter Davis was one of our most eloquent orators. He was also a strong and polished writer. This document from his pen made a bill of indictment which it was extremely difficult to answer. The Democracy failed to avail themselves of the divisions among their opponents. In their National Convention, held at Chicago, General George B. McClellan was nominated for President. It has been America s unfortunate lot to have pro duced many men who have had greatness thrust upon them. Of all these General McClellan is the most conspicuous example of deplorable inability to carry the responsibilities and perform GENERAL MC CLELLAN. 415 the duties of exalted station. Of amiable dispositions and, doubtless, of patriotic impulses, he was by nature wholly unfit for the conduct of great affairs whether civil or military. A formidable movement or a great idea " stampeded " him. As a soldier he was masterly only in retreat. No illustrious captain of any age ever got a superior army out of the way of . an inferior one with so much skill and eclat. His generals and his magnificent army won some victories in spite of him of which he declined to take the least advantage. In political affairs he was the merest tyro. One of the most melancholy mistakes with which history will charge President Lincoln s conduct of the war will be his retaining this excellent gentle man in a military position which he was incompetent to fill. The political campaign of the year 1864 was one of earnest ness on the part of the Republicans, but was not characterized by even the usual outward manifestations of excitement. In the midst of a terrible war, by which the South was being devastated, and the North in nearly every household mourning the long absence or, may be, the death of a citizen soldier, it had been unbecoming had the ordinary tricks, parades, and effervescence of partizan politics prevailed. A notable event of the campaign was the resignation of Mr. Montgomery Blair as a member of President Lincoln s cabinet. Mr. Blair had been Postmaster General since the beginning of Mr. Lincoln s administration. The son of a distinguished politician, the brother of another, he was himself but little known to the country when President Lincoln called him to the cabinet. He performed his official duties with energy and ability, but through certain disputes and quarrels growing out of General Fremont s operations in Missouri, in the early part of the war, and, perhaps, through other causes also, Mr. Blair had become extremely unpopular with the Radical wing of the Republican party. He was regarded as the marplot of the administration. It seemed to be necessary, certainly highly desirable, that there should be but one candidate against Gen eral McClellan. President Lincoln, under these circumstances, felt justifiable in requesting Mr. Blair to withdraw from his cabinet. The request being instantly complied with, the with- 416 LIFE OF HORACE GRP:ELEY. drawal of General Fremont as a Presidential candidate speedily followed. In political logic, one withdrawal was the result of the other. A matter of more importance in respect to the war generally than to the political campaign, was an attempt by Mr. Greeley to bring authorized parties together with the object of con cluding the war by negotiation. This he undertook even so early as January, 1863, but after weeks of endeavour had to give it up, "without having come in sight of any rebel proposition at all." In July, 1864, he received a letter from W. C. Jewett, urging further efforts in this behalf, and, unwilling to leave anything undone that might honourably be done in the interest of peace, he enclosed Mr. Jewett s letter to President Lincoln, with one of his own, as follows: NEW- YORK, July 7, 1864. MY DEAR SIR: I venture to enclose you a letter and telegraphic dis patch that I received yesterday from our irrepressible friend, Colorado Jewett, at Niagara Falls. I think they deserve attention. Of course, I do not indorse Jewett s positive averment that his friends at the Falls have "full powers" from Jefferson Davis, though I do not doubt that he thinks they have. I let that statement stand as simply evidencing the anxiety of the Confederates everywhere for peace. So much is beyond doubt. And, therefore, I venture to remind you that our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of blood ; and a wide-spread conviction that the government and its promi- ment supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the approaching elections. It is not enough that we anxiously desire a true and lasting peace ; we ought to demonstrate and establish the truth beyond cavil. The fact that A. H. Stephens was not permitted a year ago to visit and confer with the authorities at "Washington has done harm, which the tone of the late National Convention at Baltimore is not calculated to counteract. I entreat you, in your own time and manner, to submit overtures for pacification to the Southern insurgents, which the impartial must pro nounce frank and generous. If only with a view to the momentous elec tion soon to occur in North Carolina, and of the draft to be enforced in the Free States, this should be done at once. I would give the safe-con duct required by the Rebel envoys at Niagara, upon their parole to avoid observation, and to refrain from all communication with their sympathi zers in the loyal States; but you may see reasons for declining it. But whether through them or otherwise, do not, I entreat you, fail to make the PEACK NEGOTIATIONS. 417 Southern people comprehend that you, and all of us, are anxious for peace, and prepared to grant liberal terms. I venture to suggest the following PLAN OF ADJUSTMENT. 1. The Union is restored and declared perpetual. 2. Slavery is utterly and forever abolished throughout the same. 3. A complete amnesty for all political offenses, with a restoration of all the inhabi tants of each State to all the privileges of citizens of the United States. 4. The Union to pay four hundred million dollars (400,000,000) in five-per-cent United States stock, to the late Slave States, loyal and secession alike, to be apportioned pro rata, according to their population respectively, by the census of 1860, in compensation for the losses of their loyal citizens by the abolition of slavery. Each State to be entitled to its quota upon the ratification by its legislature of this adjustment. The bonds to be at the absolute disposal of the legislature aforesaid. 5. The said Slave States to be entitled henceforth to representation in the House on the basis of their total, instead of their Federal population, the whole now being free. 6. A national convention to be assembled as soon as may be, to ratify this adjustment, and make such changes in the Constitution as may be deemed advisable. Mr. President, I fear you do not realize how intently the people desire any peace consistent with the national integrity and honour, and how joy ously they would hail its achievement, and bless its authors. With United States stocks worth but forty cents in gold per dollar, and drafting about to commence on the third million of Union soldiers, can this be wondered at? I do not say that a just peace is now attainable, though I believe it to be so. But I do say that a frank offer by you to the insurgents, of terms which the impartial would say ought to be accepted, will, at the worst, prove an immense and sorely needed advantage to the national cause. It may save us from a Northern insurrection. Yours truly, HORACE GREELEY. HON. A. LINCOLN, President, Washington, D. 0. P. S. Even though it should be deemed unadvisible to make an offer of terms to the Rebels, I insist that, in any possible case, it is desirable that any offer they may be disposed to make should be received, and either accepted or rejected. I beg you to invite those now at Niagara to exhibit their credentials and submit their ultimatum. H. G. Upon the receipt of this letter, President Lincoln authorized Mr. Greeley to repair to Niagara Falls and converse with the gentlemen said to have authority to treat. These " rebel negotiators " were supposed by Mr. Greeley to be Messrs. Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, Jacob Thompson, of Missis sippi, James P. Holcombe, of Virginia, with Mr. George N. Sanders attached. Mr. Thompson, however, did not appear. Messrs. Clay and Holcombe, in acknowledging a note from Mr. Greeley to them as ambassadors with full powers, and as Buch offering them safe-conduct to "Washington, corrected that 27 418 LIFE OF I1OKACE GKEELEY. opinion, stating that they had not been accredited as the bear ers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace. Whereupon, Mr. Greeley telegraphed to Washington for fur ther instructions. In response the President sent the follow ing by the hands of Major Hay : EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., July 18, 1864. To wJwm it may concern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the Executive Govern ment of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms, on other sub stantial and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe-conduct both ways. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Messrs. Holcombe and Clay declined the safe-conduct thus offered, and in a long note to Mr. Greeley undertook to show that President Lincoln s proposition was insulting to the South and could not be entertained. They undertook again, to "fire the Southern heart," but did not meet with notable success. Mr. Greeley had no authority to negotiate, and did not undertake anything of the kind. He endeavoured to bring peace-makers together. In this he failed, but the result of his effort was strong proof of the fact that the rebel authorities would not treat except upon condition of separation. And this was beneficial to the Union cause throughout the North, whilst the President s proposition greatly cheered the friends of free and united America in Europe. It is to be observed, however, that Mr. Greeley s "proposed " plan of adjustment " as set forth in his letter to The President would have saved the nation immensely in treasure and life, without losing a single benefit that came from a further prosecution of the war. But had the government submitted this plan, it would, doubt less, have been rejected no less cavalierly than any other which did not recognize the confederate government. So the war went on. The campaigns of Generals Grant and Sherman, that of the former in Virginia, that of the latter in Georgia, were conducted with great vigour. General Grant, GENERAL GRANT. 419 up to the early part of 1864, had all the time been in command in the "West, and South. Early in 1862, he had forced the unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson. The surprise of Shiloh followed, but he turned defeat into victory, of which greater advantage would have been taken, there is little doubt, but for the caution of General Halleck, who soon assumed command. The campaigns of Vicksburgh and of Chattanooga were of inestimable value to the Union cause. Thus was the great valley of the Mississippi restored to the control of the Union government. At Chattanooga, the back-bone of the rebellion was broken. Thereafter, the cause of the Confed eracy was hopeless. General Grant, being transferred to the East, took command of the armies operating against Richmond. General Sherman had command of the principal armies in the South. It is the opinion of the best military critics that General Sherman s operations in Georgia manifested the greater military genius and those of Grant against the forces defending Richmond the sublimer pluck and fortitude. Sherman marched to victory; Grant fought his way to it. Sherman seemed to place his chief reliance in his soldiers legs; Grant, on his soldiers lives. Grant could not have conducted the campaign of Atlanta, nor Sherman that of Richmond. Those who have charged General Grant with a needless slaughter of troops in his operations for the capture of Richmond may be in the right, but, if so, it is because the capture of the rebel capital was not worth the sac rifice. That was the work he was given to do, and it could only be done, after McClellan and Halleck, through " red fields of blood." Of all our generals, Grant alone, perhaps, had the nerve to assume the dread responsibility and execute the fearful task imposed upon him; much more fearful than it need have been, but not through fault of his. In 1862, he would have lost no more lives than McClellan lost; and he would have taken Richmond. The stubborn, relentless warfare of Grant, the brilliant suc cesses of Sherman, gave great encouragement to the Unionists. Canby and Farragut also had heroic success in Mobile Bay; and then, what with General Thomas s magnificent victory of 420 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Nashville, Sherman "slashing through the Carolinas," after his remarkable march to the sea, General Wilson s great cav alry operations, and Grant s final movements against Richmond, the triumph of the Union was made complete. It was most fitting that the capitulation of one great rebel army should be made to Grant, the other to Sherman. After this, all that was left of the dreadful war, was like the small pattering of rain which succeeds the bursting of the thunder-cloud. Then followed the warm, bright sunshine of national rejoic ing. The jubilation throughout the North was universal, clearly demonstrating that Mr. Greeley had been right, in his letter to President Lincoln above quoted when he said with so much emphasis that the country longed for peace. In the midst of the rejoicings, however, the President was assassinated. This most horrid crime plunged the public from the height of joy to the deepest sorrow. It was impossible that the murder of so good a man at any time should not have aroused pro found griet and indignation. Taking place as it did in the midst of national gratulations upon the return of peace, it is not surprising that it was followed by proceedings of an irreg ular, unlawful, dangerous, and scandalous character. The great reaction destroyed the presence of mind of government and people. Certainly nothing in our history ever so greatly called forth the sorrow of the people. At the Capital, there was universal manifestation of mourning. Within a few minutes after the announcement of death, hundreds of buildings were draped with black. Soon, nearly every house was placed in mourning. The supply of goods of this" kind was completely exhausted. But perhaps the most touching manifestation of grief was on the part of the poor negroes. They knew not where to find comfort. Thousands of them lifted up their voices and wept as they walked along the public streets. The whole nation was cast down in sorrow; and if there was a feeling of revenge mingling with the finer sentiment, the nature of the good President s taking off will fully explain it. Of Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley deliberately wrote: PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 421 There are those who say that Mr. Lincoln was fortunate in his death as in his life; I judge otherwise. I hold him most inapt for the leadership of a people involved in desperate, agonizing war ; while I deem few men better fitted to guide a nation s destinies in time of peace. Especially do I deem him eminently fitted to soothe, to heal, and to re-unite in bonds of true, fraternal affection a people just lapsing into peace after years of dis tracting desolating internal strife. His true career was just opening when an assassin s bullet quenched his light of life. Mr. Lincoln entered Washington the victim of a grave delusion. A genial, quiet, essentially peaceful man, trained in the ways of the bar and the stump, he fully believed that there would be no civil war, no serious effort to consummate Disunion. His faith in Reason as a moral force was so implicit that he did not cherish a doubt that his Inaugural Address, whereon he had bestowed much thought and labour, would, when read throughout the South, dissolve the Confederacy as frost is dissipated by a vernal sun. I sat just behind him as he read it, on a bright, warm, still March day, expecting to hear its delivery arrested by the crack of a rifle aimed at his heart; but it pleased God to postpone the deed, though there was forty times the reason for shooting him in 1860 that there was in 65, and at least forty times as many intent on killing or having him killed. No shot was then fired, however; for his hour had not yet come. ******* When we were at length unmistakably launched on the stormy ocean of civil war, Mr. Lincoln s tenacity of purpose paralleled his former immo bility. I believe he would have been nearly the last, if not the very last, man in America to recognize the Southern Confederacy, had its arms been triumphant. He would have much preferred death. This firmness impelled him to what seemed to me a grave error. Because he would never consent to give up the Union, he dreaded to recognize in any manner the existence of the Confederacy. Yet such recognition, after the capture of several thousand of our soldiers, became inevitable. Had fortune uniformly smiled on our arms, we might have treated the Rebel lion as a seditious riot; but our serious loss in prisoners at Bull Run rendered this thenceforth impossible. We were virtually compelled to recognize the Confederates as belligerents, by negotiating an exchange of prisoners. Thenceforth (it seems to me) we were precluded from treating them as felons. And I could see 110 objection, not merely to receiving with courtesy any overtures for peace they might see fit to make, but even to making overtures to them, as Great Britain so publicly did to our Revolu tionary fathers in the Summer of 76. War has become so fearfully expensive, through the progress of invention and machinery, that to protract it is to involve all parties in bankruptcy and ruin. Belligerents are, therefore, prone to protest their anxiety for Peace, in most cases, sincerely. Napoleon, though often at war, was always proclaiming his anxiety for peace. It seemed to me, throughout our great struggle, that a more vigorous prosecution, alike of War and of Peace was desirable. Larger armies, in the average more energetically 422 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. led, more ably handled, seemed to be the National need, down to a late stage of the contest. And I deemed it a mistake to put aside any overture that looked to the achievement of peace. Instead of repelling such over tures, however unpromising, I would have openly welcomed any and all, and so treated each as to prove that the continuance of war was not the fault of our side. And so, when Henry May, Col. Jacquejs, and others, solicited permission to go to Richmond in quest of Peace, I would have openly granted them every facility, asking them only to state distinctly that I had not sent nor accredited them. And I judge that Mr. Lincoln slowly came to a conclusion not dissimilar to mine, since Mr. F. P. Blair s two visits to Richmond were made with his full knowledge ; while his own visit to Fortress Monroe, there to meet Confederate Commissioners and discuss with them terms of pacification, was a formal notice to all con cerned of his anxiety to stay the effusion of blood. I believe that this conference did much to precipitate the downfall of the tottering Confed eracy. I doubt whether any one of Sherman s nearly simultaneous successes did more. And, while Mr. Lincoln would have been a tenacious champion of the authority and dignity of the Union and the rights and security of all its loyal people, I am sure the vanquished Rebels would have found him a generous conqueror. Mr. Lincoln died for his country as truly as any soldier who fell fighting in the ranks of her armies. He was not merely killed for her sake, because of the high responsibilities she had a second time devolved on him, and the fidelity wherewith he fulfilled them, he was worn out in her service, and would not, I judge, have lived out his official term, had no one sought his immolation. When I last saw him, a few weeks before his death, I was struck by his haggard, care-fraught face, so different from the sunny, gladsome countenance he first brought from Illinois. I felt that his life hung by so slender a thread that any new access of trouble or excess of effort might suddenly close his career. I had ceased to appre hend his assassination, had ceased even to think of it; yet "the sunset of life " was plainly looking out of his kindly eyes and gleaming from his weather-beaten visage. Mr. Lincoln was emphatically a man of the people. Mr. Clay was called " The Great Commoner " by those who admired and loved him ; but Clay was imperious, even haughty, in his moods, with aristocratic tastes and faults, utterly foreign to Lincoln s essentially plebeian nature. There never yet was man so lowly as to feel humbled in the presence of Abra ham Lincoln ; there was no honest .man who feared or dreaded to meet him ; there was no virtuous society so rude that, had he casually dropped into it, he would have checked innocent hilarity or been felt as a damper on enjoyment. Had he entered as a stranger a logger s camp in the great woods, a pioneer s bark-covered cabin in some new settlement, he would have soon been recognized and valued as one whose acquaintance was to be prized and cultivated. Mr. Lincoln was essentially a growing man. Enjoying no advantages in youth, he had observed and reflected much since he attained to man- PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 423 hood, and he was steadily increasing his stock of knowledge to the day of his death. He was a wiser, abler man when he entered upon his second than when he commenced his first Presidential term. His mental pro cesses were slow, but sure ; if he did not acquire swiftly, he retained all that he had once learned. Greater men our country has produced ; but not another whom, humanly speaking, she could so ill spare, when she lost him, as the victim of Wilkes Booth s murderous aim. Though I very heartily supported it when made, I did not favoxtr his re- nomination as President ; for I wanted the War driven onward with vehe mence, and this was not in his nature. Always dreading that the National credit would fail, or the National resolution falter, I feared that his easy ways would allow the Rebellion to obtain European recognition and achieve ultimate success. But that " Divinity that shapes our ends " was quietly working out for us a larger and fuller deliverance than I had dared to hope for, leaving to such short-sighted mortals as I no part but to wonder and adore. We have had chieftains who would have crushed out the Rebellion in six months, and restored "the Union as it was"; but God gave us the one leader whose control secured not only the downfall of the Rebellion, but the eternal overthrow of Human Slavery under the flag of the Great Republic. 1 The Convention which had re-nominated Mr. Lincoln for the Presidency, had selected Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, as candidate for Vice-President. Upon the death of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Johnson became President by force of constitutional pro vision. The questions which now arose for settlement by statesmanship were novel, difficult, exciting. The reconstruc tion of States lately in rebellion: the rehabilitation of the Union: presented a problem of the gravest practical import ance and upon which, as was natural, there was wide difference of opinion. Mr. Johnson entered into the office of the Presi dency with incomparably more dignity than that with which he had been inducted into the office of the Vice-Presidency; but on either occasion his penchant for speechifying was gen erously manifested. Upon becoming President, he seemed to be governed by an earnest desire to see severe penalties im posed upon the late rebels in arms and their leaders. In the course of a few months, however, he fell into the arms of Mosby s guerrillas, and from that time forth there was wide difference between him and most Republicans. Mr. Greeley more than once undertook to bring about reconciliation 1 Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 404 et seq. 424 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. between the President and Congress. In September, 1866, he gave an account of his efforts in this behalf: Soon after our last State election, and before the assembling of the pres ent Congress, I went, not uninvited, to Washington, expressly to guard against such a difference. Being admitted to an interview with the Presi dent, I urged him to call to Washington three of the most eminent and trusted expositors of Northern anti-slavery sentiment, and three equally eminent and representative Southern ex-Rebels, and ask them to take up their residence at the White House for a week, a fortnight, so long as they might find necessary, while they, by free and friendly conference and discussion, should earnestly endeavour to find a common ground whereon the North and the South should be not merely reconciled, but made ever more fraternal and harmonious. I suggested that the President should occasionally, as he could find time, drop in on these conferences, and offer such suggestions as he should deem fit, rather as a moderator or common friend, than as a party to the discussion. A. suggestion of names being invited, I proposed those of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, Gerrit Smith of New York, and Judge R. P. Spaulding of Ohio, as three who seemed to me fair representatives of the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, while neither specially obnoxious to, nor disposed to deal harshly with, the South ; and I added that I hoped they would be met by men like General Robert E. Lee, Alexander H. Stephens, etc., who would be recognized and heeded by the South as men in whose hands her honour and true interests would be safe. But I added that I had no special desire that these or any particular men should be selected, wishing only that those chosen from either section should be such as to command their people s confidence and support. And I pledged myself to support, to the extent of my power, any adjustment that should thus be matured and agreed upon. Some two months later, after the meeting of Congress, and when the political sky had become darker, I went again to Washington, on the assurance of a mutual friend that the President desired to see me. The joint committee on reconstruction had then been appointed. At an inter view promptly accorded, I urged the President to invite this committee to the White House, and discuss with them, from evening to evening, as friend with friends, all the phases of the grave problem of reconstruction, with a fixed resolve to find a basis of agreement if possible. I urged such con siderations as occurred to me in favour of the feasibility of such agree ment, if it were earnestly sought, as I felt sure it would be on the side of Congress. The vast patronage in the President s hands, the reluctance of the majority in Congress to see their friends, supporters, and nominees, expelled by wholesale from office, and their places supplied by bitter adver saries ; the natural anxiety of every party in power to maintain cordial relations with the head of the government chosen by its votes, these, and a thousand kindred considerations, rendered morally certain an agree- RECONSTKUCIION. 425 ment between Congress and the President, without a sacrifice of principle on either hand, if the latter sould sincerely seek it. I speak only of what I said and proposed, because I have no permission and no right to speak further. That my suggestions were not followed, nor anything akin to them, the public sadly knows. And the conclusion to which I have been most reluctantly forced is, that the President did not want harmony with Congress, that he had already made up his mind to break with the party which had elected him, and seek a further lease of power through the favour and support of its implacable enemies. The difference between Congress and tne President became so great that he was at last impeached by the House of Rep resentatives for high crimes and misdemeanours. The trial of the impeachment in the Senate was conducted with notable ability both on the side of the impeachment and that of the defense. The country took profound interest in the proceed ings, which were reported with great fullness by the daily press. Among the journals most earnestly advocating impeach ment was The Xew-York Tribune, but at this time Mr. Greeley himself was absent in the "West, his journal being in charge of his then lieutenant, Mr. John Russell Young. Had Mr. Greeley himself been in charge, some of the intemperate expressions of The Tribune would never have appeared. Impeachment failed. The President was acquitted, though a large majority of members voted for conviction, to secure which a two-thirds majority was necessary. There was a tre mendous popular clamour in the Republican party against those Senators of that party who voted against impeachment; as though a matter of this sort were subject for party disci pline! Those Senators were sublimely in the right who main tained their independent judgment, whether it was correct or erroneous, in a matter of this kind, and who indignantly repelled all attempts to swerve them from their duty as they had undertaken to perform it by solemn oath. Upon the question of Reconstruction, out of which impeach ment grew, Horace Greeley had clear and carefully considered views. They might be summed up in a single phrase, amnesty for the past, all rights for all men, white and black, now and in the future. These views will be found best stated, perhaps, in his celebrated Richmond speech, delivered on the 4:26 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. occasion of his visit to that city for the purpose of relieving the government of further responsibility in the incarceration of Mr. Jefferson Davis. This address is printed, as reported at the time, in the Appendix to this volume. Had the views then and there announced by Mr. Greeley been forthwith adopted, there can be little doubt that much subsequent misunderstanding, heart burning, unhappy ill will between the different sections of the restored Union might have been avoided. Herein, as was so often the case with him, he was in advance of his cotempor- aries. To adopt a figure used by Theodore Parker in his memorable address upon the death of Daniel Webster, most men pass from mountain-top to mountain-top, like the beast of burden, by slowly trudging down into and across the valley and laboriously working their way up; while men of genius pass swiftly over the expanse as though on the wings of the eagle. Mr. Greeley s liberal views upon reconstruction, though at last finally adopted, at least in theory, by the government, were at the time now under consideration greatly misappre hended. And from this resulted certain illiberal legislation, which had been entirely unnecessary had his policy been sus tained. To this legislation he felt constrained to yield reluctant assent, whereby he was temporarily involved in apparent rather than real inconsistency. At this time, he thought it better to sustain the government, against his personal judgment, than to assail what many regarded as a necessarily harsh measure in the interest of peace. CHAPTEK XXIY. HORACE GREELEY AND JEFFERSON DAVIS. Jefferson Davis, Escaping from Richmond, Is Captured Confined at Fortress Monroe Impracticability of Trial Horace Greeley s Inter view with Senator Wade, of Ohio, on the Subject of Bailing Mr. Davis Mr. Greeley is Dissuaded from the Project But at Length Finally Resolves to Go Upon the Bond Visits Richmond for that Purpose The Scene in the Court Room Mr. Greeley s Richmond Speech Effect of this Act of Magnanimity Upon the Public. ^ the collapse of the rebellion, Mr. Jefferson Davis, who had all the while been President of the Southern Confederacy, escaped from Richmond with his family. The Executive De partment of the Union government offered a large reward for his capture. Nevertheless, it is probably true that in all the great solicitudes of President Lincoln s life, the greatest was that which caused him to fear Mr. Davis might be captured. Nothing is more certain than that Mr. Lincoln fervently wished the escape of the late President of the late de-facto rebel government. He is known to have said that " if Davis were taken he would be the biggest elephant on our hands we have had yet, and we have had some large-sized animals." The President s assassination so greatly aroused the feelings of all good people whether in one part of the country or another, that the proclamations and speeches of his successor, breathing threatenings and slaughter, seemed to be heartily sympathized with. It was Mr. Greeley s opinion that had Mr. Davis, imme diately after his capture, been tried by "drum-head court- martial." convicted, and put to death, the proceeding would have been generally approved at the time, whatever the sober second thought of the people might have been. But he was not tried by drum-head nor any other court-martial. Escorted under strong guard to Savannah, Georgia, he was thence taken (427) 428 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. by sea to Fortress Monroe, and placed in close confinement as a military prisoner. " An indictment for treason was found against him," says Mr. Greeley; "but he remained a military prisoner in close jail for nearly two years, before even a pre tence was made of arraigning him for trial." The truth is, the trial of Mr. Davis, under the indictment which was found against him was impracticable. It was cer tain that he was guilty; it seemed to be equally certain that a jury could not be empannelled in Virginia which would con vict him, if indeed, one could be empannelled at all under the ancient rules of law which pertained to that time-honoured institution. The government had erred, if error there was in this matter, in not having Mr. Davis and a few others promptly tried under a jurisdiction where trial would have been neither a farce nor a mockery. This first error resulted in a secoud one, namely, the long incarceration of Mr. Davis at Fortress Monroe. If he was entitled to his life, he was entitled to a speedy trial. And this last, as we have seen, was impracticable in Virginia. If the prisoner could not be tried, he was entitled to his liberty. At length Mr. Greeley was consulted by Mr. George Shea, Mr. Davis s counsel of record in the case, upon the feasibility of procuring the names of persons on the prisoner s bond to appear for trial at the mandate of the court, who had been conspicuous Unionists throughout the war. Mr. Greeley named two such persons, eminent in the country, and, after reflection, added : " If my name should be found necessary, you may use that." Months afterwards, he was apprised by a telegram from Washington that his name was needed, and he proceeded to the Capital with the object of proffering it. Arrived at Washington, he found many true and life-long friends who doubted the policy of his proposed action in the matter. He had a long interview with Senator Wade, of Ohio, upon the subject, after he had talked with many others. Among all our public men there has not been one more noted for plainness of speech than Benjamin F. Wade, unless it were Horace Greeley himself. There was very little bowing and scraping done on the occasion of this interview. It was a fair INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR WADE. 429 and square stand-up fight, if I may use a sporting figure, and Mr. Greeley at length threw up the sponge. He insisted that the longer continuance of Mr. Davis s imprisonment could result only in evil; in postponing the return of cordial relations between the people of the South and those of the North; that his confinement only made a martyr of him; that he was entitled by law, to a speedy trial or a speedy release; that humanity, magnanimity manifested toward him could only have a good effect upon the best people of the South. To these and other arguments Mr. Wade did not attempt a reply. He said that, even if all these things are so, " You, Mr. Greeley, are not the right man to go upon the bond. You must recol lect," he urged, " that you are not a simple citizen. You are the editor of a great journal; you are a representative man of the Eepublican party. The people believe that Jeff. Davis ought to be tried as a traitor, convicted as a traitor, and hung as a traitor. And, whether they are right or wrong, you, as editor of The New- York Tribune, and a trusted leader of the party, cannot afford to do this thing. I tell you if you do it it will kick up such a dust as even your eyes have never been stuffed with before." Statements of this kind, and earnest appeals on the part of this then devoted friend, as well as of others, dissuaded Mr. Greeley at this time from the determina tion he had made, and he returned to New- York, convinced of the impolicy but not of the unwisdom of the act he had con templated. But upon still further reflection, Mr. Greeley concluded that it was his duty under the circumstances to go upon the bond, regardless of ill consequences to himself. He, therefore, pro ceeded to the city of Richmond, for that purpose, and upon special invitation. One of our noblest philanthropists, Mr. Gerrit Smith, also signed the bond, as did John Minor Botts, a Virginian, and a Union man throughout the war, Mr. Cor nelius Vanderbilt, of New- York, and a considerable number of other men, eminent in politics or in business. The scene in the court-room, on this memorable 13th of May, 1867, was one of great irnpressiveness. Mr. Greeley had scarcely laid down his pen, when the prisoner grasped his hand 430 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. and uttered a few words of grateful acknowledgement. Mr. Greeley returned the greeting and in a few homely sentences expressed his gratification that he had been able to do him a service. Judge Underwood then declared: "The Marshal will now discharge the prisoner from custody," whereupon the long pent-up feelings of Mr. Davis s friends burst forth in shouts which the Marshal was utterly unable for some time to repress. Amid the excitement Mr. Greeley quietly took his departure from the animated scene which he had himself chiefly created. Before leaving Eichmond, Mr. Greeley was invited to deliver a speech before the people. He accepted the invitation, and addressed the people at the African Church, very often used for political meetings on account of its great size. The im mense building was crowded, the main body being occupied by persons of high social standing, most of whom had taken sides with the Confederacy during the war, the aisles and gal leries being filled with coloured people. The speech delivered by Mr. Greeley, though strictly extemporaneous, was one of great thoughtfulness, power, and statesmanlike wisdom. It pandered neither to Southern whites nor Southern blacks, but showed a noble, a lofty friendship for both, and recommended reconstruction, the return of thorough peace upon principles of benignant philanthropy and universal political and civil rights. 1 Mr. Greeley s act of magnanimity, for such, so far as he was concerned, it certainly was, had a two-fold eifect; or, rather, it was followed by two series of results widely different the one from the other. In the -South, it was highly applauded, and quite generally looked upon as the forerunner of thorough pacification. " Let us all show," said The Eichmond Whig, "that Northern generosity is the true avenue to Southern friendship. We repeat, a great stride was yesterday taken in This speech, which I regard as one of the best ever made by Mr. Greeley, will be found at length in the Appendix to this volume. Those who wish to do full justice to Mr. Greeley s policy of reconstruction, as those who desire to be acquainted with one of the most admirable of American forensic efforts, will not fail to read it. EFFECT OF BAILING MR. DAVIS. 431 the line of reconstruction." " "We hail the event," said an old and influential Virginia journal, " as an auspicious one, fraught with good, and recognize the present as a fortunate time for both sections of the Union to set out with a new purpose, to bury their animosities, and meet together on a common ground of justice, peace, and fraternity." But the Richmond corres pondent of The Baltimore Sun summed up the whole matter about as completely and truthfully as any other writer. Said he: The effect of Mr. Davis s release in all parts of the State has been not only cheering and exhilirating, but it has done more to promote good feel ing, real cordiality, toward the North and toward the government, than any event which has occurred since the close of the war. I have not seen till now any reason to believe that the South would, for years, do more than accept the situation, and content herself with a perfunctory performance of the obligations she has assumed; but the release of Mr. Davis has touched the Southern heart, and I believe that it is at this moment beating strong to the old music of nationality and brotherly love. The appear ance in Court, of Mr. Horace Greeley and Mr. Gerrit Smith, and their noble interposition in behalf of Mr. Davis, have had peculiar influence in bringing about this happy result. Our people look upon them as repre sentative Northern men, and the hand thus stretched out to them they have grasped warmly. This time it is no dramatic grasp, but palpably honest, and prompted by full hearts. Similar expressions came up from all parts of the South. Unhappily Mr. Greeley and Mr. Gerrit Smith did noli; on account of certain presumed party necessities, herein appear to be " representative Northern men." Immediate and noisy clamour was raised against the act. Statesmen who in private admitted the necessity of Mr. Davis s release, nevertheless added their public voice to increase the general condemnation. And thus by one means or another, the victorious North, with whom magnanimity would have been easy, was made to appear unwilling to meet the South on a common ground of justice, peace, and fraternity. The South asked ot us bread and we gave her a stone. It was in spite of Horace Greeley s earnest efforts that the North was placed in this false position. The good that he would have done was retarded, indefinitely post poned, by many who should have bravely sustained him. The effect upon himself of this magnanimous act was then 432 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. and afterwards unpleasant and disastrous. Many Republican journals severely criticised what he had done; few heartily endorsed the deed. He was a member of a Union League Club of New- York. Certain members thereof proposed to u discipline " him for his doings in the premises. Whereupon, he wrote an open letter in The Tribune, which not only explains his conduct, vindicates it, and tells some plain truths on the subject in hand, but also has no little historical, as well as biographical significance. Wherefore, I judge it well that it may appear here in full: BY THESE PRESENTS GREETING! To MESSRS. GEORGE W. BLUNT, JOHN A. KENNEDY, JOHN O. STONE, STEPHEN HYATT, and thirty others, members of the Union League Club: GENTLEMEN. I was favoured, on the 16th inst., by an official note from our ever-courteous President, John Jay, notifying me that a requisition had been presented to him for " a special meeting of the Club at an early day, for the purpose of taking into consideration the conduct of Horace Greeley, a member of the Club, who has become a bondsman for Jefferson Davis, late chief officer of the Rebel government." Mr. Jay continues: "As I have reason to believe that the signers, or some of them, disapprove of the conduct which they propose the Club shall consider, it is clearly due, both to the Club and to yourself, that you should have the opportunity of being heard on the subject; I beg, therefore, to ask on what evening it will be convenient for you that I call the meet ing," etc., etc. In my prompt reply I requested the President to give you reasonable time for reflection, but assured him that 7 wanted none ; since I should not attend the meeting, nor ask any friend to do so, and should make no defence, nor offer aught in the way of self-vindication. I am sure my friends in the Club will not construe this as implying disrespect; but it is not my habit to take part in any discussions which may arise among other gentlemen as to my fitness to enjoy their society. That is their affair altogether, and to them I leave it. The single point whereon I have any occasion or wish to address you is your virtual implication, that there is something novel, unexpected, astounding, in my conduct in the matter suggested by you as the basis of your action. I choose not to rest under this assumption, but to prove that you, being persons of ordinary intelligence, must know better. On this point I cite you to a scrutiny of the record : The surrender of General Lee was made known in this city at 11 P. M. of Sunday, April 9, 1865, and fitly announced in The Tribune of next morn ing April 10th. On that v&ry day, I wrote, and next morning printed in these columns, a leader entitled " Magnanimity in Triumph," wherein I said : LETTER TO UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 433 "We hear men say: Yes, forgive the great mass of those who have been misled into rebellion, but punish the leaders as they deserve. 1 But who can accurately draw the line between leaders and followers in the premises? By what test shall they be discrimin ated? * * * * Where is your touchstone of leadership? We know of none. " Nor can we agree with those who would punish the original plotters of secession, yet spare their ultimate and scarcely willing converts. On the contrary, while we would revive or inflame resentment against none of them, we feel far less antipathy to the orig inal upholders of the resolutions of OS, to the disciples of Calhoun and McDuffle, to the nulliflers of 1832, and the State Rights men of 1850, than to the John Bells, Humphrey Marshalls, and Alexander H. H. Stuarts, who were schooled in the national faith, and who, in becoming disunionists and Rebels, trampled on the professions of a lifetime, and spurned the logic wherewith they had so often unanswerably demonstrated that secession was treason. * * * * We consider Jefferson Davis this day a lese culpable traitor than John Bell. " But we cannot believe it wise or well to take the life of any man who shall have sub mitted to the national authority. The execution of even one such would be felt as a personal stigma by every one who had aided the Rebel cause. Each would say to him self, I am as culpable as he; we differ only in that I am deemed of comparatively little consequence. A single Confederate led out to execution would be evermore enshrined in a million hearts as a conspicuous hero and martyr. We cannot realize that it would be wholesome or safe we are sure it would not be magnanimous to give the overpowered disloyalty of the South such a shrine. Would the throne of the house of Hanover stand more firmly had Charles Edward been caught and executed after Culloden? Is Austrian domination in Hungary more stable to-day for the hanging of Nagy San dor and his twelve compatriots after the surrender of Vilagos? "We plead against passions certain to be at this moment fierce and intolerant; but on our side are the ages and the voice of history. We plead for a restoration of the Union, against a policy which would afford a momentary gratification at the cost of years of perilous hate and bitterness. * * * * "Those who invoke military execution for the vanquished, or even for their leaders, we suspect will not generally be found among the few who have long been exposed to unjust odium as haters of the South, because they abhorred slavery. And, as to the long- oppressed and degraded blacks, so lately the slaves, destined still to be the neighbours, and (we trust) at no distant day the fellow-citizens of the Southern whites, we are sure that their voice, could it be authentically uttered, would ring out decidedly, sonorously, on the side of clemency, of humanity." On the next day I had some more in this spirit, and on the 13th, an elaborate leader, entitled "Peace, Punishment," in the course of which I said : "The New-York Times, doing injustice to its own sagacity in a characteristic attempt to sail between wind and water, says: Let us hang Jefferson Davis and spare the rest. * * * We do not concur in the advice. Davis did not devise nor instigate the Rebel lion; on the contrary, he was one of the latest and most reluctant of the notables of the Cotton States to renounce definitively the Union. His prominence is purely official and representative; the only reason for hanging him is that you therein condemn and stig matize more persons than in hanging any one else. There is not an ex-Rebel in the world no matter how penitent who will not have unpleasant sensations about the neck on the day when the Confederate President is to be hung. And to what good end? " We insist that this matter must not be regarded in any narrow aspect. We are most anxious to secure the assent of the South to emancipation; not that assent which the condemned gives to being hung when he shakes hands with his jailer and thanka him for past acts of kindness; but that hearty assent which can only be won by mag nanimity. Perhaps the Rebels, as a body, would have given, even one year ago, as large and as hearty a vote for hanging the writer of this article as any other man living: hence. It more especially seems to him important to prove that the civilization based on free abour is of a higher and humaner type than that based on slavery. We cannot realize 28 434 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. that the gratification to enure to our friends from the hanging of any one man, or fifty men, should be allowed to outweigh this consideration." On the following day I wrote again : " We entreat the President promptly to do and dare in the cause of magnanimity. Th Southern mind is now open to kindness, and may be magnetically affected by gener osity. Let assurance at once be given that there is to be a general amnesty and no general confiscation. This is none the less the dictate of wisdom, because it is also the dictate of mercy. What we ask is, that the President say in effect, Slavery having, through rebellion, committed suicide, let the North and the South unite to bury the carcass, and then clasp hands across the grave. " The evening of that day witnessed that most appalling calamity, the murder of President Lincoln, which seemed in an instant to curdle all the milk of human kindness in twenty millions of American breasts. At once insidious efiorts were set on foot to turn the fury thus engendered against me, because of my pertinacious advocacy of mercy to the vanquished. Chancing to enter the Club-House the next (Saturday) evening, I received a full broadside of your scowls, ere we listened to a clerical harangue intended to prove that Mr. Lincoln had been providentially removed because of his notorious leanings toward clemency, in order to make way for a successor who would give the Rebels a full measure of stern justice. I was soon made to comprehend that I had no sympathizers or none who dared seem such in your crowded assemblage. And some maladroit admirer having, a few days afterward, made the Club a present of my por trait, its bare reception was resisted in a speech from the chair by your then President, a speech whose vigorous invective was justified solely by my pleadings for lenity to the Rebels. At once a concerted howl of denunciation and rage was sent up from every side against me by the little creatures whom God, for some inscrut able purpose, permits to edit a majority of our minor journals, echoed by a yell of "Stop my paper!" from thousands of imperfectly instructed readers of The Tribune. One impudent puppy wrote me to answer cate gorically whether I was or was not in favour of hanging Jefferson Davis, adding that I must stop his paper if I were not! Scores volunteered assur ances that I was defying public opinion ; that most of my readers were against me ; as if I could be induced to write what they wished said rather than what they needed to be told. I never before realized so vividly the baseness of the editorial vocation, according to the vulgar conception of it. The din raised about my ears now is nothing to that I then endured and despised. I am humiliated by the reflection that it is (or was) in the power of such insects to annoy me, even by pretending to discover with surprise something that I have for years been publicly, emphatically proclaiming. I must hurry over much that deserves a paragraph, to call your attention distinctly to occurences in November last. Upon the Republicans having, by desperate effort, handsomely carried our State against a formidable- looking combination of recent and venomous apostates with our natural adversaries, a cry arose from several quarters that I ought to be chosen LETTER TO UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 435 United States Senator. At once, kind, discreet friends swarmed about me, whispering, " Only keep still about universal amnesty, and your election is certain. Just be quiet a few weeks, and you can say what you please thereafter. You have no occasion to speak now." I slept on the well- meant suggestion, and deliberately concluded that I could not, in justice to myself, defer to it. I could not purchase office by even passive, nega tive dissimulation. No man should be enabled to say to me, in truth, " If I had supposed you would persist in your rejected, condemned amnesty hobby, I would not have given you my vote." So I wrote and published, on the 27th of that month, my manifesto entitled " The True Basis of Reconstruction," wherein, repelling the idea that I proposed a dicker with the ex-Rebels, I explicitly said : " I am for universal amnesty, so far as immunity from fear of punishment or confisca tion is concerned, even though impartial suffrage should, for the present, be defeated. I did think it desirable that Jefferson Davis should be arraigned and tried for treason ; and it still seems to me that this might properly have been done many months ago. But it was not done then; and now I believe it would result in far more evil than good. It would rekindle passions that have nearly burned out or been hushed to sleep ; it would fearfully convulse and agitate the South; it would arrest the progress of reconciliation and kindly feeling there; it would cost a large sum directly, and a far larger indirectly; and, unless the jury were scandalously packed, it would result in a non-agreement or no verdict. I can imagine no good end to be subserved by such a trial; and, holding Davie neither better nor worse than several others, would have him treated as they are." Is it conceivable that men who can read, and who were made aware of this declaration, for most of you were present and shouted approval of Mr. Fessenden s condemnation of my views at the Club, two or three even ings thereafter, can now pretend that my aiding to have Davis bailed is something novel and unexpected? Gentlemen, I shall not attend your meeting this evening. I have an engagement out of town, and shall keep it. I do not recognize you as capable of judging, or even fully apprehending me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause, but don t know how. Your attempt to base a great, enduring party on the hate and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody civil war, is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here, that, out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and sisning that bail-bond as the wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were com petent to do, though you had lived to the age of Methuselah. I ask nothing of you, then, but that you proceed to your end by a direct, frank, manly way. Don t sidle off into a mild resolution of censtfre, but move the expulsion which you purposed, and which I deserve, if I deserve any reproach whatever. All I care for is, that you make this a square, stand-up fight, and record your judgment by yeas and nays. I care not how few vote with me, nor how man} vote against me; for I know that the latter will repent it in dust and ashes before three years have 436 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. passed. Understand, once for all, that I dare you and defy you, and that I propose to fight it out on the line that I have held from the day of Lee s surrender. So long as any man was seeking to overthrow our government, he was my enemy; from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he was my formerly erring countryman. So long as any is at heart opposed to the national unity, the Federal authority, or to that assertion of the equal rights of all men which has become practically identified with loyalty and nationality, I shall do my best to deprive him of power; but, whenever he ceases to be thus, I demand his restoration to all the privileges of Ameri can citizenship. I give you fair notice, that I shall urge the re-enfran chisement of those now proscribed for rebellion so soon as I shall feel con fident that this course is consistent with the freedom of the blacks and the unity of the Republic, and that I shall demand a recall of all now in exile only for participating in the Rebellion, whenever the country shall have been so thoroughly pacified that its safety will not thereby be endangered. And so, gentlemen, hoping that you will henceforth comprehend me some what better than you have done, I remain, Yours, HORACE GREELEY. NEW- YORK, May 23, 1867. There are sortie expressions in this letter which it were to be wished had been omitted, but upon the whole, it was a ringing defiance and challenge which Mr. Greeley s assailants richly merited at his hands. The Club resolved that there had been nothing " in the action of Horace Greeley, relative to the bailing of Jefferson Davis, calling for proceedings in this Club." Gracious Club! One of the most remarkable effects of the storm which was made to grow out of this affair, was that upon the sale of his history of the war. It had previously been very large and steady, but for a time after the bailing of Mr. Davis almost entirely ceased, thousands who had subscribed for it refusing to take their copies! The storm having blown over, the sales of " The American Conflict " again became great and steady. There is one point in the case of Mr. Greeley s entering upon Mr. Davis s recognizance, which I have never seen properly explained. The condition of the bond was, not to get Mr. Davis released from imprisonment, but that he should appear and answer to the indictment which had been found against him, and abide the order of the court therein. If Mr. Davis had herein defaulted, or shall do so, then the bond becomes forfeit, and the money payable, and not before. There is no statute JUDGE CLIFFORD. 437 of limitations against an indictment for treason. If the gov ernment could have wisely tried Mr. Davis, why has it not done it? He is under obligation to appear when called upon, and undoubtedly would appear, upon due summons. And this among other reasons because he would not allow Horace Greeley s bond to become forfeit. If, then, the government was relieved of culpability for a great cruelty, without harm to any right, or injury to any proceeding connected with the trial of Jefferson Davis, the government was, and still is, indebted for it all to the wisdom and courage and magna nimity of Horace Greeley. Though it is undoubtedly true that Mr. Greeley herein rendered Mr. Davis an incalculably great and noble service, it is no less true that the service he hereby rendered the government of the United States was even greater. Having reflected as profoundly and candidly upon this subject as I know how to do, I have deliberately arrived at the conclusion, that Mr. Greeley s act in this matter was the best, the wisest, the most benignant of a long life crowded full of good, and wise, and benignant actions. And I doubt not that the children of those who non-concur herein will deliberately reverse the judgment of their fathers. NOTE. While this work is passing through the press, I find an account of a dinner given to Mr. Justice Clifford, of the Supreme Court of the United States at Charleston, South Carolina, in the latter part of March, 1873, by Colonel Richard Lathers, whereat Judge Clifford stated some facts in regard to the case of Jefferson Davis which had not been generally known. There were several noted Northern and Southern men present. After a long talk upon the celebrated Webster-Parkman murder, which Judge Clifford had prosecuted, the conversation was led into the case of Mr. Davis. It is thus reported by The Daily News of Charleston: Another event of great historical interest in which Judge Clifford participated was the solemn consultation of a small number of the most able lawyers of the North at Wash ington, a few months after the war, upon the momentous question as to whether the Federal Government should commence a criminal prosecution against the Hon. Jeft erson Davis for his participation and leadership in the war of secession. In this council, which was surrounded at the time with the utmost secrecy, and which has never yet been described, were United States Attorney General Speed. Judge Clifford, the Hon. William M. Evnrts, and perhaps half a dozen others, who had been selected from the whole Northern profession for their legal ability and acumen, and the result of their deliberation was the sudden abandonment of the case by the Federal Government in view of the insurmountable difficulties in the way of getting a final conviction, which were revealed by their patient study of the law bearing upon the case. Mr. Hoadley, 438 LIFE OF HORACE GREEUEY. then and now a near neighbour and intimate friend of Judge Clifford, relates that, before the latter set out for Washington to join this conference, he paid him (Mr. Hoadley) the compliment of calling upon him to consult upon the momentous question which he was about to assist in solving, and it was agreed between them that, unless it were clear that the conviction of Mr. Davis would follow his trial, and that the law and the facts on the side of the prosecution would be irresistible in the Supreme Court, as well as in whatever court of original jurisdiction the case might be initiated, it would be the part of wisdom and true statesmanship, as well as policy, not to begin the prosecution. The conference took place, and was long, learned, and profound. The Federal Constitution, the law of nations, the decisions of the Supreme Court in the trial of Aaron Burr, and other causes celebres, having more or less bearing on the case then under consideration, and the whole list of State trials in the history of the civilized world, were studied, weighed, analyzed, and dissected. The council were divided upon some points and agreed upon others. Some were at first strenuous for prosecution; others who had weighed the subject more carefully, insisted from the first upon the futility of such a course; and finally the wiser counsels of the latter prevailed, and the proposed prosecution of Mr. Davis was, as will be remembered, suddenly abandoned, although it may doubtless be news to many of our readers to learn that this sudden change of policy was the direct result of this solemn conclave. After the council had adjourned, and Judge Clifford had returned to his home, Mr. Hoadley inquired the result of their deliberations, and Judge Clifford made a striking aud characteristic reply in something like the following language: "Remarkable as the fact may appear, we find that the laws of the United States are not so constructed as to aft ord any certainty of punishing high treason or rebellion, and Mr. Davis, if arraigned under them, cannot be brought to conviction. Perhaps it is that the men who framed our fundamental law and system of government, and who were then fighting for liberty, with halters about their necks, did not pay much attention to the question of punishing in tne future the acts which they were commit ting themselves." Another reminiscence, illustrating the sentiment of the thinking men in the North, in 1865, was related by Mr. Hoadley of the Hon. John A. Andrew, then Governor of Massa chusetts. It was on the day of the grand review of the Federal army in Washington ; a number of gentlemen were being entertained at the residence ot Gen. S. L. M. Barlow, in that city, and the conversation had turned to the subject of bringing the leaders of the Confederate cause to punishment under the criminal law of the land, when Gov. Andrew expressed himself as follows : " It cannot be done. The criminal law has no application here. Why, it is proved by its very title that the criminal law is a law for criminals the laws or the code of laws formed by the great body of the people, who are in the main good men, for the regulation and punishment of the bad men scattered here and there throughout society. But when a whole people commit an act, rash, impolitic, and direful in its consequences though it may be, and the best and wisest men and women of the whole people participate therein, encourage and lead it, it is impossible to consider the criminal law as being framed to meet that case, or as being in any way applicable thereto. These people appealed to the arbitrament of war, and they have suffered by the war that is their punishment. I believed in giving them war, when it was war they wanted, yes, and I gave a Captain s commission once to a Massachusetts sergeant for no other reason than that he had, with his own hands, hanged seven guerrillas. That was war; that was the measure of their punishment, but criminal law has nothing to do with this case." This declaration of the emphatic Governor of Massachusetts caused the remark, when related yesterday, that it had an historical parallel in the famous words of Burke, when he told the British Parliament, in reference to the American revolution ists, that he "knew of no way to write an indictment of a whole people." We need not doubt that a j the years roll on, history will as triumphantly vindicate the memory of Horace Greeley in other instances of misrepre sentation, as, we now cannot help seeing, it will speedily do in reference to his wise and magnanimous action in the case of Jefferson Davis. CHAPTEE XXY. MORE HISTORY OF THE TRIBUNE. More of The Tribune s " Isms " Proudhon Endorses the Principle of the " Woman s Rights " Reform Advocates Labour Reform Asso ciation Adopted in The Tribune Office An Era of Energetic Idium A Desciption of The Tribune Establishment How the Paper Is Edited Mention of Tribune Writers The Composition Room Press Room Counting Room The "Weekly" Day Resume of Tribune History from Its Beginning Vitality of a Great Journal. HAVING accompanied Mr. Greeley through the most momen tous era of the republic s history: through scenes of high excitement and of stirring, great events, a period of the hard-won victory of great ideas: it will be appropriate now to recur to matters of a more peaceful, quiet nature. The Tribune continued to prosper, notwithstanding the fair play it gave to u isms," an "ism" being, of course, an unpopular idea. Had The Tribune lived a little while before the discovery of America by Columbus, we make no doubt it would have given full hearing to the theory of sphericalism; to the visionary notion, namely, that the earth is round. Had it been in existence so long ago as the time of Galileo, it would have allowed him at least a column a week for the advocacy of his visionary and heretical hypothesis that the world is a moving rather than a stationary planet. For such unauthorized ideas, The Tribune would have been excommunicated by the regulars, and pronounced a dangerous journal by the interested representatives of the flat and stand-still world. It might appear to have been Mr. Greeley s judgment that every new idea, correct or erroneous, advocated by a respectable mind, with a good object, was entitled to respectful considera tion; and that every doctrine, dogma, and practice which he believed to be wrong and hurtful, should receive hearty con demnation, no matter how unpopular that condemnation might (439) 440 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. be. Thus we find him saying at a time when a certain political party of prescriptive creed was on the flood tide of success: We are every day greeted by some sage friend with a caution against the certain wreck of our influence and prosperity which we defy by opposing the secret political cabal commonly known as " the Know-Nothings." One writes us that lie procured one hundred of our present subscribers, and will prevent the renewal of their subscriptions in case we persist in our present course ; another wonders why we will destroy our influence by resisting the popular current, when we might do so much good by falling in with it and guiding it, and so on. To the first of these gentlemen we say : " Sir : We give our time and labour to the production of The Tribune, because we believe that to be our sphere of usefulness; but we shall be most happy to abandon journalism for a less anxious, exacting, exhausting vocation, whenever we are fairly and honourably released from this. You do not frighten us, therefore, by any such base appeals to our presumed selfishness and avarice ; for if you could induce not merely your hundred but every one of our subscribers to desert us, we should cheerfully accept such a release from our present duties, and try to earn a livelihood in some easier way. So please go ahead ! " And now to our would-be friend who suggests that we are wrecking our influence by breasting the popular current : " Good sir ! do you forget that whatever influence or consideration The Tribune has attained has been won, not by sailing with the stream but against it ? On what topic has it ever swam with the current, except in a few instances wherein it has aided to change the current? Would anyone who conducted a journal for popularity s or pelf s sake be likely to have taken the side of liquor prohibition, or anti-slavery, or woman s rights, or suffrage regardless of colour, when we did? Would such a one have ventured to speak as we did in behalf of the anti-renters, when everybody hereabouts was banded to hunt them down unheard? Can you think it probable that, after what we have dared and endured, we are likely to be silenced now by the cry that we are perilling our influence ?" And now, if any would prefer to discontinue The Tribune because it is and must remain opposed to every riieasure or scheme of proscription for opinion s sake, we beg them not to delay one minute on our account. We shall all live till it is our turn to die, whether we earn a living by making newspapers or by doing something else. More than fifteen years afterwards, in the last book of per manent usefulness which came from his pen, when speaking of "the farmer s calling," he says: I have repeatedly been stung by the receipt of letters gravely informing me that my course and views on a current topic were adverse to public IN THE ADVANCE. 441 opinion : the writers evidently assuming, as a matter of course, that I was a mere jumping-jack, who only needed to knowwhat other people thought to insure my instant and abject conformity to their prejudices. Very often, in other days, I was favoured with letters from indignant subscribers, who, dissenting from my views on some question, took this method of inform ing me that they should no longer take my journal a superfluous trouble, which could only have meant dictation or insult, since they had only to refrain from renewing their subscriptions, and their Tribune would stop coming, whenever they should have received what we owed them ; and it would in no case stop till then. That a journalist was in any sense a public teacher that he necessarily had convictions, and was not likely to suppress them because they were not shared by others in short, that his calling was other and higher than that of a waiter at a restaurant, expected to furnish whatever was called for, so long as the pay was forth coming these ex-subscribers had evidently not for one moment suspected. That such persons have little or no capacity to insult, is very true; and yet, a man is somewhat degraded in his own regard by learning that his vocation is held in such low esteem by others. The true farmer is proudly aware that it is quite otherwise with his pursuit that no one expects him to swallow any creed, support any party, or defer to any prejudice, as a condition precedent to the sale of his products. Hence, I feel that it is easier and more natural in his pursuit than in any other for a man to work for a living, and aspire to success and consideration, without sacrificing self-respect, compromising integrity, or ceasing to be essentially and thoroughly a gentleman. "A very natural division of mankind," once said The Trib une, " is that which contemplates them in two classes those who think for themselves, and those who have their thinking done by others, dead or living. With the former class, the paramount consideration is What is right / With the lat ter, the first inquiry is What do the majority, or the great, or the pious, or the fashionable think about it ? How did our fathers regard it ? What will Mrs. Grundy say ? " This appears to be as thorough a description of the conservative as we can hope for. He might possibly have the reform element in him, though consulting the majority, the great, the pious, the fashionable, the shades of his ancestors; but, consulting all these and Mrs. Grundy, there is no hope for him. It was Mr. Greeley s opinion that such a conservative was "past praying for." But again: " The world does move, and its motive power, under God, is the fearless thought and speech of those who dare be in advance of their time who are sneered 442 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. at and shunned through their days of struggle and of trial as lunatics, dreamers, impracticables, and visionaries men of crotchets, of vagaries, or of isms. These are the masts and sails of the ship, to which Conservatism answers as ballast. The ballast is important at times indispensable -but it would be of no account if the ship were not bound to go ahead." And still again: "In a world so full as this of wrong and suffering, of oppression and degradation, there must be radical causes for so many and so vast practical evils. It cannot be that the ideas, beliefs, institutions, usages, prejudices, whereof such gigantic miseries are born wherewith at least they co exist transcend criticism and rightfully refuse scrutiny. It cannot be that the springs are pure whence flow such turbid and poisonous currents." One might fill a volume with extracts from The Tribune showing the reform spirit, the spirit of radical reform, if you please, of its Editor. Yet it is but just to Mr. Greeley to say that he did not lay hold of every floating idea because it hap pened to be in reach, or thrust toward him by importunate advocates. Though his good nature, his abounding generosity, his trust in men, were not seldom sadly imposed upon, his judgment was rarely led estray. Let the sham, not man or woman, which deceived him, be named. In truth, innumerable instances. of his bursting brilliant bubbles with a strong whiff from his stalwart mind might be adduced in demonstration of his skeptical nature. He would not condemn a claim or a creed unheard; and it has already become history that many of his visions of years ago are the practical and beneficent realities of the present. Pierre Joseph Proudhon, a French writer of celebrity, had risen from the ranks of Labour, and only a few years after the founding of The ISTew-York Tribune, began to make considera ble sensation in his own country. He assailed society with more vigorous diction, if not with stronger argumentation, than Fourier. He commenced a pamphlet entitled Qu est-ce que la Propriety ? with the sentence afterwards so celebrated. La preprint/, tfest le vol, Property is Robbery. To the " isms " of Proudhon The Tribune gave respectful hearing and candid WOMEN S RIGHTS. 443 criticism. And, it is submitted, one of the great journals of the time, whose Editor had himself risen from the ranks of Labour, could not otherwise have received the results of a mind so acute and daring as that of Proudhon, no matter though his genius may have been erratic. It was not only to Proudhon that The Tribune extended welcome. Other " isms " received fair treatment. Among them the proposed reform of "Woman s Eights." Women s Conventions have come to be quite in the ordinary way. They are among the common occurrences of current history; and some of them are very common indeed. But there was a time when a Woman s Convention was a new thing under the sun. There had to be, of course, the first Woman s Convention. Of this Convention, The Tribune gave a full report, and treated it throughout with respectful consideration. It endorsed with emphasis the principle underlying the proposed reform, but did not become an advocate of the measures urged by the Women s Eights party. It said: " It is easy to be smart, to be droll, to be facetious, in opposition to the demands of these Female Reformers; and, in decrying assumptions so novel and opposed to established habits and usages, a little wit will go a great way. But when a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what adequate reason he can give for refusing the demand of women to an equal participation with men in political rights, he must answer, None at all. True, he may say that he believes it unwise in them to make the demand he may say the great majority desire no such thing; that they prefer to devote their time to the discharge of home duties and the enjoy ment of home delights, leaving the functions of legislators, sheriffs, jury men, militia, to their fathers, husbands, brothers; yet if, after all, the ques tion recurs, But suppose the women should generally prefer a complete political equality with men, what would you say to that demand ? the answer must be, I accede to it. However unwise or mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and as such must be con ceded. " It was a great deal harder to say this when it was said than it would be to say it now. We shall see, before the conclusion of this volume, that the women of the Women s Eight move ment with, doubtless, some honourable exceptions returned Mr. Greeley s generous \velcome with ingratitude more cold blooded, heartless, and, I had almost said, atrocious, than, we 444 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. may fervently hope, could be possible with those usually classed as of the sterner sex. Nevertheless, the Woman s Rights " ism " was debited up against Mr. G-reeley, during the whole period of its almost universal unpopularity. It was one of those distasteful things which prepared the way for The Times. During all the years Mr. Greeley was Editor thereof, The Tribune earnestly advocated Labour reform. It was not more heartily the champion of amnesty after the war of the rebel lion than it ever was the friend of the workingman. Through the elevation of the labouring classes it sought the welfare of the whole people. The early advocate of cooperation, it ex tended welcome to trades unions, and to every well-considered effort made by workingmen for their improvement and advance ment. Horace G-reeley was the iirst eminent American to ad vocate a reduction of the hours of labour. He admitted the wisdom of strikes in very many instances. He manifested his true regard for workingmen by uttering his opinions as one of themselves, not as a flattering, fawning demagogue. When he thought they were making a mistake in a strike or a policy, he told them so, and suggested what he conceived to be a better remedy for the ills sought to be cured than the one proposed. If the articles in The Tribune in behalf of Labour Reform were published in a volume, it would be one of large size, of many prophetic passages, and of no little value to a movement shall we call it a revolution ? which is destined to mark an early, let us hope the next, grand step forward in the progress and the happiness of mankind. Moreover, Horace Greeley enforced the idea of Association not only by precept but by example. Only a few years alter the founding of the paper, Messrs. Greeley & McElrath, then making handsome profits from The Tribune, exhibited the sincerity of their belief in the principle for the emancipation of Labour which their journal had so persistently maintained, by putting it into practice in their own establishment. The property was valued at one hundred thousand dollars. This was divided into one hundred shares of one thousand dollars each, of which Mr. Greeley and Mr. McElrath retained a majority, selling the balance to regular employes of the estab- ASSOCIATION. 445 lishment. Thus several gentlemen of the editorial corps, the cashier, the foreman of the composition-room, and the fore man of the press-rooms became joint-owners with the original proprietors. Speaking of this venture in an editorial in The Tribune in 1851, Mr. Greeley said: " The course of The Tribune is still onward. Commenced individually by him who has continued to be its chief editor, the number of its proprie tors has since been gradually increased to twelve, including all those responsibly connected with its conduct, editorial, financial, or mechanical. These purpose and hope in time to make still further application of the general principle that the workman should be his own employer and director, and should receive the full reward of his labour. The quickened sense of responsibility, and the more thorough devotion of mind and muscle to the appointed work which this system induces, will be found to overbalance any incidental disadvantages, if its application be wisely made, so that the new idea and the old habits may be gradually and safoly harmonized." In 1867 The Tribune published a detailed statement of its receipts and expenditures for the years 1865 and 1866, respect ively. The receipts in 1865 were $816,537.02, the expenditures $646,107.16, making receipts over expenditures $170,429.86, or nearly twice the total valuation of the whole property when association was adopted. In the following year the receipts were $909,417.89, but the expenditures were correspondingly heavy, amounting to $885,158.39, leaving a profit of something more than $24,000. During this year The Tribune paid $418,199.62 for printing paper; $86,609.14 for type setting; $81,775.40 for editorial services; 49,300.57 for correspondence: $58,776.04 for news by telegraph. The bills for ink amounted to nearly $10,000, and the United States tax on receipts for advertisements was $10,082.19. Workingmen, printers especially, should not fail to bear in mind that The Tribune Company was not merely a joint stock corporation. It was more, the association of ownership and labour. Printers were given the opportunity to buy shares, paying therefor in work at the regular rates. I suppose the stock is now worth from five hundred to one thousand per cent, premium. That is, a printer who originally bought a share in The Tribune, paying therefor one thousand dollars, LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. could sell it for from five to ten thousand. If lie owned it in 1865, his dividend thereon was about seventeen hundred dollars, a sum which he made in addition to his pay in the composition-room or the press-room, as the case might have been. But this is not all. It is undoubtedly the fact that one of the most valuable inventions ever made in the interest of great newspaper establishments was the process of stereotyping the forms. I shall speak, or rather quote, of this in some detail before concluding this chapter. Let it suffice here to say that the invention was made by an employe of The Tribune, working regularly on the paper for years, at stated wages, and who was also a stockholder in the concern. Now it may with perfect safety be urged that, no matter how skilful and careful this foreman might have been, he never would have devoted the long time and hard study which finally resulted in a great invention, except he had been animated by the desire of increasing the value of his own property. It was almost painful to him to see the types smashed by the ponderous press, because they were, in part, his own. His wages would have been the same, had the press gone on forever daily ruin ing many types. But his dividends would have been less. So he set his mind to work in their behalf and won a handsome and a valuable victory. Association infuses mental into manual labour, with the result of increased skill, less drudgery, better pay. All which and more the history ot Horace Greeley s venture in The Tribune Company abundantly show r s. We have seen that Horace Greeley often used " strong lan guage " in social converse with friends. Perhaps there has been no period in the history of The Tribune when it so fre quently dealt in " the energetic idium " as about the time association was adopted. It is only just to say that Mr. Greeley was often cruelly misrepresented and maligned; fairly goaded into overflowing indignation. No man who ever lived cared less for opposition, if carried on with truth and reasonable candour. Indeed, we have already seen, that he rather liked to be opposed, and had little sympathy for "thin skins." STRONG LANGUAGE. 447 About the time of which we speak, however, his own life was so often and so grossly libelled; his opinions, which he sincerely believed were calculated to promote the welfare of the people, were so constantly, and as he felt, so wilfully and greatly mis represented, that it is no wonder The Tribune was frequently more vituperative and abusive than is consistent with good taste or effective argumentation. We sometimes say a man uses strong language when but for our chivalric politeness we should say he has a vulgar vocabulary. If The Tribune occa sionally showed that its vocabulary was unlimited, as well in the low as the high notes, we should be culpably unjust not to consider the provocation. And we have the authority of so fine a gentleman as Sir Walter Scott for the statement, that when one is persistently abused by a blackguard one may put an end to the business by knocking him down. Many who assailed Mr. Greeley were gentlemen: many who assailed him were gentlemen with some ungentlemanly habits; others, in a spirit of the loftiest courtesy, in which there is so often some thing of irony, I will call gentlemen. To the attacks of all he replied with manly vigour, and if he now and fhen weakened the force of his reply by indecorous language, we may perceive that here was "poverty of the manly American sort," sure not to last long. Besides, he could hardly have been an American citizen, taking an active part in politics, without both giving and receiving blows which never should have been dealt at all. Take off the cream of high-toned discussion from the conduct of American politics, and what a dish of unpalatable skim-milk would be left! And the measurement would not have been perceptibly decreased by the removal of the cream, either. The American characteristic of exaggeration, our apparently irrepressible tendency to hyperbole. finds expression, in politics, in abuse. It is matter of regret that The New-York Tribune so ably maintained a national characteristic which is not at all creditable, at least in the development of it of which we speak, to our nationality; but, because it is a national trait, our condemnation of it in any particular instance should be made more in sorrow than in anger. One need not to reason long in concluding that the journal 448 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. founded in 1841, the proprietor starting with about a thousand dollars capital, which before the close of the decade was worth $100,000 in cash, must meantime have grown into an estab lishment of vast proportions and extensive and varied capacities. Mr. A. J. Cumin ings contributed a series of articles to Packard s Monthly magazine in 1868-69, upon the subject " How Newspapers are made," which gave a full description of The Tribune establishment at that time, with sketches of Mr. Greeley and other editors. The articles were so happily conceived and so graphically written, and upon a topic too, ot such general interest, that they had " the run of the press " pretty generally. Nevertheless, I think I could not do a more acceptable service to my readers than by reproducing much of what Mr. Cummings then wrote; for I am perfectly certain it would be next to impossible for any one to give a more accu rate or more lively description of the editorial, the mechanical, and the business operations of the office. Mr. S. S. Packard, the editor and publisher of the magazine in question, having most kindly given me leave to make such use of that periodical as might aid me in this work, 1 I quote extensively from Mr. Cummings s graphic sketches: An immense dry-goods box, surmounted by a flag-staff, and dotted with windows, stands on the corner of Spruce and Nassau streets. This, so a sign informs us, is The Tribune Building. The edifice itself is nothing but a mass of dirty -faced bricks piled along Print ing-House Square. The Tribune purchased, last year, the adjoining property on Nassau street, but cannot improve it till the expiration of a lease, when it will erect a suita ble building on the two lots. Standing on the curb of the Park, opposite i In reply to a note that I addressed to Mr. Packard, inquiring upon what terms I might make use of this interesting matter, I promptly received the following : "PACKARD S BUSINESS COLLEGE. "No. 805, Broadway, New- York, March 25, 1873. "Mr DEAR SIB: "Your favour is at band. You have my free permission to use anything in Packard s Monthly which will aid yon in your work. * *" Yours truly, " S. S. PACKAUD. " L. D. INGEBSOLL, Esq." I here publicly acknowledge grateful thanks for the portion of this work which, I cannot but think, will be more interesting than any other to my fellow-printers, and highly instructive to all general readers. TRIBUNE BUILDINGS. 449 old Tammany Hall, and casting your eyes to the right, surveying a portion of The Herald s palatial marble front, the skeleton mass of red sand-stone called The Express office, and the architectural piles of Nova Scotia granite and brown stone inclosing The World and Times establishments, The Tribune seems like a small potato, indeed, and its size diminishes as the eye roams to the left, taking in The Sun office, snugly ensconced with Brick Pomeroy s Democrat beneath a Mansard roof, and the stately marble faces of The Staats Zeitung and The News. The Herald building is an architectural fop, with a can-can collar and a dress-coat, The Express office is a quasi-shabby ticket speculator, The World establishment is a nobby broker, The Times edifice is a white-chokered city clergyman, The Sun front is a Tammany politician clad in second-hand garments, The Staats Zeitung is a dapper little bald-headed Dutchman, The News is a broken down scion of Southern chivalry, clothed in white linen and wearing a Panama hat, while The Tribune pile resembles a country farmer, with patched pants, slouched hat, loose suspenders, and a dirty shirt. Carefully surveying the front of the building from the street, its sign alone attracts attention. There it is TRIBUNE. in big block letters, each eight feet long, glaring at you day and night, from a roof covering five stories and a double basement, and there it has stood twenty-three years, staring at excited crowds on election nights, gazing at gangs of infuriated rioters, looking down upon the funeral pro cessions of Lincoln, Ellsworth, Sedgwick, Clay, and other distinguished dead patriots, smiling at the parade in honour of the Prince of Wales, frowning at the attempted coup d etat of Fernando Wood, laughing at the great cable celebration of 1858, exulting in the joyful outpourings of the people in honour of Union victories, dancing in the atmosphere of the great Republican torchlight procession preceding President Lincoln s first election, lighted up with the illumination of the City Hall on the stormy night following the news of the capture of Fort Donelson, and observing a hundred similar events chronicled on the page of our city s history. The flickering light of a thousand metropolitan fires, destroying- millions of property, has danced over the faces of these ten gilt letters. During the three nights of the draft riots they were never shrouded in darkness. Through storm and sunshine, Union victories and Rebel tri umphs, the old sign has stood as firm as the journal which itrepresents. Of the twenty-six newspaper signs within our range of vision, The Tribune sign i s the most conspicuous. We stand opposite the office, near the gate entering the Park. From this spot, when in his sanctum, Mr. Greeley can easily be seen. Hundreds of persons pass here every evening without imagining the white-headed man seen through the fourth and fifth windows, second story, from the corner of Spruce street, to be Mr. Greeley. Yet there he is in his editorial 29 4:50 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. nest nearly every afternoon and evening, seated at his desk, his fingers nervously dancing over thin sheets of foolscap within four inches of his nose, and his white head and broad forehead made especially conspicuous by the carefully shaded gas-light above. Here he works in a gold mine that his own natural talents, indomitable energy, and unflagging industry have created. And yet there must be a screw loose, somewhere, for while fifty men have made fortunes out of The Tribune, Horace Greeley, with all the attention given to outside literary pursuits, is comparatively a poor man. Ever ready to help the needy and destitute, ever easy of access, his better judgment is hourly drowned by his sympathies. There are twenty windows in front of The Tribune office. Some of them have histories. During the riots of 1863 a brass Dahlgren was masked behind the sashes of the corner window on the second story, and if the Rebel mob had made a second attempt upon the building, a death-dealing stream of hubs and old spikes would have issued from the mouth of that gun. The fifth window from the right in the fourth story, now an eye of the room occupied by John Russell Young, faced for many years the favourite corner of Wm. Henry Fry. Here, while wasting away beneath the insidious approaches of a pulmonic disease, poor Fry would sit by the hour, and gaze at the horse-cars, carts, and omnibusses crawling along the street below, and write those musical criticisms so peculiarly abstruse, or scratch off a political editorial, jointed with rivets of original sarcasm. Take the second and third windows, fourth story, from the corner of Spruce street. Between these sashes Mr. George Ripley has written the Book Reviews of The Tribune for a score of years. In former days he invaria bly opened the window on his right to learn the time from the City Hall clock, but time has dimmed his spectacles, and he has been compelled to purchase a watch. And clear up there in the corner, on the top floor, Old Dodge, or "Antiquated Heathen," as his comrades call him he is a stiff infidel, and takes the Boston Investigator has stuck type for a living over twenty-five years. A revolver was fired at the mob from that corner win dow on the evening of July 14, 1863, by one of the four plucky type-setters who barricaded the door of the composing room, and determined to hurl iron " shooting-sticks," lead " side-sticks," fifty-pound " turtles," and sim ilar printing material, on the heads of the riotors, in case they attempted to force a passage up the winding iron stairs. The row of windows on the editorial floor all have a warlike history. During the riots thirty-pound shells were sent to the office from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and five troughs, ten feet long, were furnished, with the intention of running them out from those very windows, and of rolling the shells down upon the heads of the mob in the street below. The result would have been that the whole front of the building would have been demolished, and the warlike editors would have sustained more injury than the riotors. Every brick in the whole building seems to have its own peculiar history. Even the pave ment sleeping in front of the counting-room has its story to tell, for dead men dropped on the flagging during that memorable evening, and barri cades of printing-paper, four feet thick, arose thereon before daylight. THE COUNTING-ROOM. 451 We have seen the shell. Now let us look at the kernel. Crossing the street, we enter one of the four doors to the counting-room. The ceiling is not high, but the room is decently ventilated. A short counter, ending on the left in a little gate, and flanked by cash and mail desks, confronts us. Here are two dozen clerks, all busy as bees, opening letters, counting money, registering advertisements, receiving subscriptions, writing wrap pers, mailing odd copies of the paper, and attending to twenty other similar duties. Engravings of Horace Greeley hang on the walls, and two or three dusty busts of Lincoln stand in the corners of the room. Step to the counter. A white face, set with two inild blue eyes and fringed with hair inclining to a rolling curl, salutes us. This is Mr. George King, a clerk in the office over twenty years, and still working faithfully in the harness. " Is Mr. Greeley in, sir ? " King glances at us very sharply, as if suspicious that we are political vermin, sent to worry Horace Greeley into the support of some worthless office-seeker then looks at the clock in his rear, and after a squint at a half-open door on his right, answers : "Twenty minutes past four" slapping his hands on the counter " the Old Man s here ! " " Can we see him ? " Another sharp scrutiny, and the words fly back : In one moment, gentlemen. At present he is engaged." A dark-complexioned gentleman, with a snapping pair of black eyes, is busy at a desk on our right, scheduling advertisements and marking down subscriptions for the Weekly and Campaign Tribunes. This is Mr. Barker, one of the old stand-byes. From him we learn that 50,000 Campaign Tribunes are being sent to Pennsylvania, 20,000 to New Jersey, over 100,000 in New York, and 300,000 to the West. While we are annoying Barker, an old man with thin straggling gray hair, and with two sharp gray eyes flashing through a pair of eye-glasses, rushes in the door, and darts through the little gate in the counter. In his hand is a bundle of checks and greenbacks. This is Mr. Jenny, the collector of the office. He looks as if he had scraped barnacles from the keel of Noah s ark. He is fre quently mistaken by awe-stricken countrymen for Mr. Greeley himself. There is pluck in this old fellow. He was the only man who faced the riotors when a storm of brickbats flew through the counting-room win dows. He struck boldly out from his shoulder when the mob rushed through the doors. Of course he was upset, but he only yielded when overpowered by numbers. The ferocious gang were too intent on plunder to visit him with their vengeance, or the old man s life would have paid forfeit to his courage. And near him is the little sharp-eyed Gerow, the cashier of the establishment, who seems as cross as an old thorough-bred rat terrier; but he has a good heart, and receives and disburses the money of The Tribune without ever making a blunder. Old Gen. Watson, gray as a badger, is pouring over the mail books at the back end of the count ing-room. These men have held their present positions for a score of years. 452 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. " Go right up stairs now, gentlemen. Mr. Greeley s there alone now!" says King. We walk through the little gate in the counter, turn within the open door way on our left, climb a short narrow flight of stairs, and find our selves in a small room, ten by fifteen, furnished with a green carpet, a bed lounge, an open book-rack, a high desk, a writing desk, three arm chairs, a short-legged table, and a small marble sink. Mr. Greeley s back is toward us. He is seated at his desk. His head is bent over his writing, and his round shoulders are quite prominent. He is scribbling rapidly. A quire of foolscap, occupying the only clear space on his desk, is melting beneath his pen. A glance at the manuscript reveals two dozen knotty figures. You may be sure of a leader on the National Debt to-morrow morning. The desk itself is a heap of confu sion. Here is Mr. Greeley s straw hat; there is his handkerchief. In front of him is a peck of newspaper clippings, not neatly rolled up, but loosely sprawled over the desk. At his left a rickety pair of scissors catches a hurried nap, and at his right a paste-pot and a half-broken box of wafers appear to have had a rough-and-tumble fight. An old-looking paper-holder is just ready to tumble on the floor. An old fashioned sand box, looking like a dilapidated hour-glass, is half hidden under a slashed cop}- of The New- York World. Mr. Greeley still sticks to wafers and sand, instead of using mucilage and blotting-paper. A small drawer, filled with postage stamps and bright steel pens, has crawled out on the desk. Packages of folded missives are tucked in the pigeon-holes winking at us from the back of the desk, and scores of half-opened letters, mixed with seedy brown envelopes, flop lazily about the table. Old papers The Charleston Mercury, The New Orleans Republican and Crescent, The St. Louis Democrat, and Republican, The Richmond Whig, and Inquirer, The Rocky Mountain News, The Albany Journal, The Philadelphia Post, The Sacramento Union, The London Times, The Portland Oregonian, The Free- Traders Journal, The Spectator, The Augusta Chronicle, The Cincinnati Commercial, and Gazette, The Chicago Post, and Republican, The London Daily News, The Hawaiian Gazette, The Athenaeum, The Detroit Post, The Mobile Register, The London Telegraph, The Boston Post (Henry Wilson carried off The Advertiser), The New- York Express, Post, Com mercial, Mail, and twenty other papers lay gashed and mangled about his chair, the debris of a literary battle-field. A clean towel hangs on a rack to his right. A bound copy of The Tribune Almanac, from 1838 to 1868, swings from a small chain fastened to a staple screwed in the side of his desk, two other bound volumes stand on their feet in front of his nose, and two more of the same kind are fast asleep on the book-rack in the corner. Stray numbers of the Almanac peep from every nook. The man who would carry off Greeley s bound pile of almanacs would deserve capital punishment. The Philosopher could better afford to lose one of his legs than to lose his almanacs. The room is kept scrupulously clean and neat. A waste-paper basket squats between Mr. Greeley s legs, but one-half the torn envelopes and boshy communications flutter to the floor instead of MR. GREELEY AT WORK. 453 being tossed into the basket. The table at his side is covered with a stray copy of The New-York Ledger. Packard s Monthly and a dozen other magazines lay thereon. Here is an iron garden-rake wrapped up in an Independent. There hangs a pair of hand-cuffs once worn by Old John Brown, and sent Mr. Greeley by an enthusiastic admirer of both Horace and John. A champagne basket, filled with old scrap-books and pamphlets, occupies one corner. A dirty bust of Lincoln, half hidden in dusty piles ot paper, struggles to be seen on the top of his desk. A pile of election tables, dirty, ragged and torn, clipped from some unknown newspaper, look as if they had half a mind to jump down on the " Old Man s " bald head. A certificate of life membership in some Tract or Abolition Society, and maps of the "World, New York, and New Jersey hang on the wall. A rare geological speciinen of quartz rock, weighing about ten pounds, is ready to roll down a high desk to the fioor on the first alarm. Dirty pamphlets are as plentiful as cock-roaches. Let us look at his office library. Here are 150 volumes. First we see five large volumes of "The Statesman s Manual," then six volumes of " The Life of Clay." Here are the lives of Lincoln, Franklin, Stephen A. Douglas, A. P. Dostie, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, and no, surely, it cannot be! the "Life of Horace Greeley!" " McPherson s Political Manual " and a volume of " Mrs. Hemans Poems " are hugging each other. Lanman s " Dictionary of Congress " is edging away from Carey s " Social Science." Plato s "Immortality of the Soul " is nip and tuck with the "Transactions of the American Wool Associa tion." Perry s "Elements of Political Economy" is courting Dickens s Mutual Friend." A volume of the Speeches of Alexander II. Stephens is making faces at Henry Wilson s " Anti-Slavery Measures in Congress." An old volume of Washington Irving s " Spanish Papers " is sandwiched between the " Handbook of Cotton Manufacture " and Seaman s " Pro gress of Nations." A "History of Londonderry" is studying the "Trial of Surratt." " Youatt on the Horse " and Helper s "Nojoque" laugh at each other over a "History of the Whig Party." Three "Gospel Litur gies" lay next to a half dozen "Reports on the Conduct of the War." A work on "Botanical Reports" kisses a copy of "The Federalist." "Allibone s History of Authors" is nearly smothered under a pile of " Census Reports." Volumes of Diplomatic Correspondence, State and Convention Manuals, Agricultural Reports, and scores of books on the National Debt and the Tariff, hold their ow r n on various shelves. Mr. Greeley can la} Virginia worm fences in ink faster than any other editor in New- York city. He uses a fountain-pen, a present from some friend. He thinks a great deal of it, but during an experience of three years has failed to learn the simple principle of suction without getting his mouth- full of ink, and he generally uses it with an empty receiver. He makes a dash at the ink-bottle every twenty seconds, places the third finger and thumb of his left hand on his paper, and scratches away at his worm fences like one possessed. He writes marvelously fast. Frequently the point of his pen pricks through his sheet, for he writes a heavy hand, and a snap follows, spreading inky spots over the paper, resembling a 454 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. wood-cut portraying the sparks from a blacksmith s hammer. Blots like mashed spiders or crushed huckleberries occasionally intervene, but the old veteran dashes them with sand, leaving a swearing compositor to scratch off the soil, and dig out the words underneath. Mr. Greeley s manuscript, when seen for the first time, resembles an intri cate mass of lunatic hieroglyphics, or the tracks of a spicier suffering from delirium tremens. But, by those accustomed to his writing, a remarkable exactness is observed. The spelling, punctuation, accented letters, and capitalizing are perfect. The old type-setters of the office prefer his man uscript above that of any other Editor, for the simple reason that he writes his article as he wishes it to appear, and rarely, if ever, cuts or slashes a proof-sheet. And this punctuality is, in a great measure, a feature of his life. He is always on time, and never waits for anybody. He employs no Private Secretary, and when he receives a letter, answers it on the instant. No matter how trival the request, the next outward-bound mail will carry away one of his autographs, if he thinks an answer necessary. He knows we have entered his room, yet he continues his writing. The only sound we hear within the sanctum is the scratching of his pen. He has the power of concentrating all the strength of his mind on the subject of his editorial, and will pay no attention to any question, however import ant, until he finishes his sentence. If the cry of " Fire ! " should resound through the building, Greeley would finish his sentence and ring his bell before he would leave his room. The sentence complete, he places the forefinger of his right hand at the end of the word last written, seizes the handle of his pen in his teeth, and looks his tormentor full in the face. It is a glance of inquiry, and the questioner, intuitively conscious of this fact, repeats his interrogation. Mr. Greeley divines the question before it is finished, and answers it pithily and quickly. The pen is then snatched from his mouth, dexterously dipped into his inkstand, and his fingers again travel across his transverse sheet of foolscap like a " daddy long- legs " caught in a storm. If his questioner is importunate, and insists on wasting his time, he continues his writing, never looking up, and either answers absent-mindedly, or in a low, impatient tone, tinged with a pecu liar boyish nervousness. If his visitor is ungentlemanly enough to still continue his teasing importunities, a storm breaks forth, and the uncour- teous person will trot out of the sanctum with an answer ringing in his ears that should bring a flush to his cheek. The popular impression of Mr. Greeley s personal appearance seems to be associated with a white hat and a white overcoat, and with one leg of his pantaloons hitched on the top of his boot-leg. This is incorrect. He is clean in his attire never wears a dirty shirt or a dirty collar, has a straw hat, a thin black frock coat, a white vest, and a pair of black doeskin pants drawn down over his boot-tops. Sometimes he wears shoes, and he has been seen with leggings. In muddy weather his boots and pants may be covered with dirt, but in pleasant days they are clean far above the average. The only mark of slovenliness about him centres in his black Bilk cravat, which will occasionally have a fight with his collar, and a slip TRIBUNE EDITORIAL ROOMS. 455 out of sight. Sometimes the necktie will hold its own with the collar, but the knot will jump round to the side of his chin and give him a remarkable air of absent-mindedness. The cause of this irregularity is his want of skill in using pins. They bend and prick his neck until he is glad to drop them. Mr. Greeley is five feet ten and a half inches in height, and well propor tioned. He is fifty-seven years old. He is partly bald, has white (not gray) hair, a light complexion, small sunken blue eyes, a well-shaped mouth, and regular features. A white beard runs over his throat and flanks his chin, like a tiny chevaux-de-frise. His hands are small, and soft as those of a woman. His teeth are wlwte and regular, and, in talking, are always observable. His feet are large and ill shaped. You can hardly say that he walks. He shuffles. The head makes a motion forward, the body follows it, as if swung on a pair of hinges at the hips, the legs then move, and the feet straggle out as if undecided whether to walk or to keep still. The fact of the business is, Horace never had time to learn to walk. He weighs a man for what he is worth, and not for what he appears to be worth. " Mr. Greeley, my friend, Mr. , who has called to pay his respects." Down goes the forefinger on his manuscript. The paper-holder quiver ing on the edge of his desk drops to the floor. You catch the glow of his smiling face, a glance of his small blue eyes, hear his shrill treble voice roll off a few pleasant words, and we descend the stairs to the counting- room, leaving him to hack away at blighting human wrongs and follies in his own peculiar manner. * * And now for the editorial rooms. Out of the counting-room, and down Spruce street to the first iron stoop. Up a pair of winding iron stairs to the fourth story. Here is an iron door, painted in three colors, bearing the following inscription : EDITORIAL ROOMS OF THE TRIBUNE. RING THE BELL! Abraham Lincoln has clicked this bell-spring. Thackeray has peered through this netted grating. John Brown has leaned against this door post. Kossuth has paired his finger-nails in this entry. Jenny Lind has drawn a silk skirt over this floor; and Henry Clay s silvery voice has floated about this circular iron corridor. The feet of scores of distin guished dead have trodden these metal stairs. Here we are at the door of the editorial room. Step within this little entry, and snap a small spring fitted into the side of the door-casing. Before the distant tinkle of the bell dies away, little Johnny Weinheimer, the office boy, opens the door, and throws a suspicious glance at us from his black eyes. We are in the City Editor s room. The walls are covered with maps. A perpendicular viaduct, for communication between the counting, editorial, and composing-rooms, with speaking-pipes, copy -boxes 456 LIFE OF HOEACE GKEEIJEY. and bells, runs from the low ceiling through the centre of the room, like the succulent branch of a banyan tree. A small library of books relating to city affairs leans against the viaduct. A water-pail and a tin jar of ice- water occupies one corner of the room. Paste-pots and inkstands are scattered over the desks in lazy confusion. Bits of blotting-paper and scores of rusty-looking steel pens are strewn about the tables. A dozen reporters are seated at a dozen small green desks. Some are writing, a few are reading, and two are smoking briarwood pipes. The most con spicuous reporter in the room is Col. James B. Mix, a man of magnificent physique, and a genuine Broadway lounger. He is dressed in exquisite taste, wears eye-glasses, black side-whiskers, and a mustache, and has a countenance that would create a sensation at a Sorosis dinner. The Colonel was formerly a private in the Seventh Regiment, N. G., went into the army, and soon became Captain of President Lincoln s Body-Guard. He dined tete-a-tete with his Excellency every morning for nearly a year. Carpenter s book can t begin with Colonel Mix in reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. He- is retailing his experiences during the Yacht-Club excursion to a small but stout-built man, with a rosy face and intelligent gray eyes. This is Mr. Barclay Gallagher, the Assistant City Editor. He has risen to his present position from the composing-room. Fred. Gedney, the author of " In the Saddle," the new serial of Putnam s, is fishing for letters in the Post-Offlce box. Zebulon White, with the pale face of a college student, is writing up a real estate report. A man of quiet ability, he is one of the most trustworthy reporters in the office. Robert W. McAlpine, formerly an editor on The Philadelphia Press and The Washington Chronicle a smooth-faced man, who might easily be taken for an interpreter for the Chinese Embassy is busily dashing off a New- York letter for a prominent Western journal. His brother Thomas is smoking over a paper-covered edition of Shakespeare. Nathan D. Urner, a heavy-built man, resembling a Mexican ranchero in pursuit of novelties, lias just finished a campaign song for The Tribune, and is punctuating it, preparatory to slipping it into- the Managing Editor s private box. He is the writer of the sensation report of the Barnum s Museum fire printed in The Tribune in July, 1865, and copied and recopied as an actual verity by English, Australian, and American papers. George W. Pearce, the Police Reporter, a rosy-com- plexioned, blue-eyed little gentleman, who seems as spry as a circus-rider, is hurriedly dashing off an "Immense Robbery in Wall Street," stopping suddenly to perpetrate a joke, and then growling at the late hours assigned him at Police Headquarters. Quinlan, a thin, ebon-eyed, black-mustached reporter, is accusing Meeker, an active, smooth-faced boy, fresh from the prairies of Illinois, of borrowing his paste-pot, and Ralph, in a nasal twang, is retorting by a counter accusation, involving the loss of a pair of scissors. George H. Stout, the Law Reporter of The Tribune, is con versing with Oswald Allen, a pink-cheeked genius of twenty-one, about the relative speed of American race-horses, as compared with English stock. The door opens, and N. G. Shepherd, the poet, walks to the letter box like a Hamlet in distress, and then dignifiedly retires with a tiny CITY EDITOR. 457 envelope. Oliver B. Stout, for twelve years the Reporter of The Trilmne at the City Hall, is telling the story of the rise and fall of Frank Boole to Curtis F. Gilbert, whose pale blue eyes snap with delight at the recital. J. E. Burke, an old New-York reporter, who has been employed on nearly every paper in the city, is squinting over an immense book in search of an assignment to duty. Thatcher, the weather man, the successor of the sage of Brooklyn Heights, enters the door, and in response to numerous ques tions, decides that it will not rain within forty hours. The Professor is an old man of about fifty-five, dressed in a seedy, snuff-coloured suit, wearing a rusty high hat, and a heavy-soled pair of shoes. For twenty-five years he has run the telescope business during the dead hours of the night in front of St. Paul s Church. He has built himself a cabin among the clouds on the roof of a nine-story building in Duane street, and there carries on his astronomical and barometrical observations when not on guard in front of St. Paul s. Shaking hands with Cassius Morey, a boy who took root in The Tribune office twelve years ago, and has now sprouted into an efficient reporter, the Professor stumbles against Alfred Armant and retires. And such is an average daily scene in the reportorial rooms of The Tribune. The City Editor of The Tribune is held responsible for the gathering of every item of news within a radius of fifty miles from New- York. The rapid growth of the city has rendered this necessary. Over 75,000 persons doing business in New- York reside in the country, and become interested in hamlet news. The Tribune satisfies this interest by daily reports of everything occurring within fifty miles of the city. Newark and Paterson, for instance, have no morning newspapers. After their evening journals go to press, Tribune reporters ransack each city until midnight in search of news, and use either special messengers or the telegraph in forwarding their returns. The Tribune is thus a morning newspaper for such cities. The Tribune has thirty-two reporters under the order of its City Editor. Thirteen of them are paid salaries ranging from fifteen to thirty-seven dollars per week, and the remainder work by the piece. On Friday each reporter makes out his bill on a blank, giving the date of the report, the number of hours spent in obtaining it, the number of lines furnished, and the number actually printed, with a statement of expenses. The printed slips are pasted to the bill as a voucher, and it is handed to the City Editor, who carefully examines and endorses it, and then turns it over to the Managing Editor, who, after a close scrutiny, draws up a check, which is paid to the reporter in person at the counting-room. The City Editor arrives at the office at ten A. M., and immediately overhauls the morning papers, reading the advertisements with special care. Every announcement of a political meeting, lecture, horse-race, excursion, real estate sale, execution, hotel-opening, steamboat-launch, etc., is clipped out and pasted in a blank book. Special attention is given to the country papers published in the vicinity. Nothing escapes or should escape the eye of the City Editor. Notices of executions and College Commence ments, and of all political and scientific convocations, are pasted in the book a month in advance. Having carefully gone through the papers, the 458 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. City Editor writes the name of the reporter he wishes to employ opposite the pasted slip. At noon the reporters enter, and copy their assignments from the book, drawing a line under each of their names, to assure the City Editor that they are aware of their detail and will attend to it. Look at the book, and you will find such entries as these : John Allen s Prayer-Meeting, Water street, 12 M. White. American Geographical Society, Historical Society Rooms, 2d avenue and llth street, 8 p. M. Meeker. Grant and Colfax Meeting, Broadway and 22d street, 8 p. M. Armant. Dog Fight at Kit Burns 1 , Water street, 9 p. M. Mix. Special service. Gilbert. See Longstreet, and have an interview with him at the New-York Hotel; make a column. Gedney. Police Headquarters. Morey. Jefferson Market Police Court. Mix. A two column article on Local Nominations. McGrew. When the City Editor has an idea of beating the other journals on a particular point of news, he marks down a trusty reporter for " special duty." Such reporter gets verbal orders from his chief, and is expected to fill them lo the letter. If his assignment was given on the book, some news shark might copy it, and furnish a report for an opposition news paper. The City Editor must necessarily be a keen judge of men. One reporter would write up a horse-race in brilliant style, but would shock ingly butcher a fashionable ball. A religious reporter and there are such would hardly give a readable account of a cock main or a dog-fight, and a reporter posted on sporting matters would make a poor fist of it if sent to do up the consecration of a church or the ordination of a bishop. Special men are adapted to special work. The Managing Editor recognizes this fact when he selects his lieutenants, and the City Editor exercises the same discrimination when picking out his non-commissioned officers and privates. "Eh? Mr. Young? Yes, sir, he s here. Do ye want to see m?" replies Johnny Weinheimer, in answer to our inquiry. " Certainly, if he is disengaged." " I ll tell you in a second." Johnny peeps through a small hole in the ground glass of the door to Young s room, then darts back to a -match-safe hanging at our side, and pulls therefrom two square slips of letter-paper. "Please write your names on this paper or, if you ve got your cards with you, they ll do jis as well. I ll take em in to Mr. Young." Our cards go in, and in ten seconds we are ushered into the presence of the Managing Editor of The Tribune. You glance at John Russell Young, and then gaze back at Johnny, as if you thought he was perpetrating a joke at our expense. What! this blue-eyed boy the Managing Editor of the most influential journal in America! You can hardly believe it. In personal appearance Mr. Young is the most insignificant person about the office. He is lighkcomplexioned, has a large, sloping head, thatched with brown hair, a clear forehead, and a prominent nose, and is as quick of JOHN RUSSELL YOUNG. 4:59 motion as a sparrowhawk. He is of medium height say five feet eight. His words flow from his lips in rapid succession, as if each one was strug gling to get out of his mouth ahead of the other. And this man has flashed upon the journalists of New- York like a literary comet. Twelve years ago he was a printer s devil ; when South Carolina sprouted into secession he was a reporter in Philadelphia; one year more found him a Dramatic Critic on The Washington Chronicle; six years ago he was the Managing Editor of The Philadelphia Press; two years after this he was with General Banks during the Red River expedition ; next we find him an agent of Jay Cooke s in 7.30 times. While at this business, in his leisure hours, he wrote editorials for The Tribune. They were unusually spicy and argumentative, attracted the attention of Mr. Greeley and Sidney Howard Gay, and now that printer s devil is a newspaper autocrat the peer of statesmen, and a potent power in the land. At first sight he appears common-place, but when you talk with him, and partly fathom the depth of that wonderful blue eye, and the decisive cut of the nose and the mouth, you recognize an impress of a peculiar intellectual vitality, a fertility of resource, a quickness of comprehension, and a nervous energy that stamps him as a steam-engine among newspaper men. His attire is neat, but not foppish. He wears one of those little round-topped hats, with a small, circular rim, and this increases his boyish appearance. His room is lined with books of reference. It is a portion of the old library of the office. Files of The New-Yorker and Greeley s old "Log Cabin " are dreaming on shelves near the floor. Files of The Tribune, Herald, World, and Times, from the date of their first publication to the present hour, all neatly bound, are at hand. Congressional Globes, Niles s Regis ter, Encyclopedias, Concordances, Political Manuals, Rebellion Records, and hundreds of other valuable books of reference stand against the wall in martial array. Bronze statuettes and lively coloured chromos occupy various positions in the room. Young writes by spasms. He pays strict attention to the business details of the office. Every letter, every bill, every rejected communication is filed. He is able to furnish, at a moment s notice, a filed voucher for every cent of expenditure during his adminis tration. Such strict attention to business requires a vast amount of time. But when a great national emergency arises, especially during the absence of H.G., he throws himself into the breach with characteristic energy, and the columns of The Tribune are red-hot with his short, sharp, ringing sentences, until the storm has passed. His were the stinging editorials on the Philadelphia Convention, his were the columns of invective poured over the Impeachment renegades, his were the fierce attacks upon the far- born movement to nominate Grant before the General had defined his position, and his are the showers of sarcasm launched upon John T. Hoffman. The phrase, "Impeachment is Peace," is Young s; so are the words, "Let us have Peace." He it was who called Grant "a sashed and girded sphinx." He it was who wrote the brilliant book reviews on Buchanan s "Defence of his Administration," "Greeley s American Con flict," and Richardson s " Life of Grant." There are no lazy hairs in his 460 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. head; each one seems to be inspired with electric energy. As Butler was the author of the word " Contraband," applied to the slaves of Rebels, so is Young the author of the word " Copperhead," as applied to the members of the Democratic party. He motions us to a seat. Dickens has occupied this same chair. Sickles, Sheridan, Longstreet, Meade, Pryor, Butler, Hill, Howard, Rosecrans, and fifty other generals, of more or less renown, have ground their elbows on this very table. Colfax, Ashley, Wilson, Wendell Phillips, Sumner, Grow, Washburne, Burlingame, Griswold, Kelley, Boutwell, and a hundred other distinguished statesmen have played with this paper-cutter. Miles O Reilly, Bancroft, Sam. Bowles, George William Curtis, Theodore Tilton, A. D. Richardson, Anthony Trollope, R. B. Rhett, E. A. Pollard, Mark Twain, Petroleum Nasby, Col. T. B. Thorpe, and three-score of well-known authors and editors have brushed their shins against this table-leg. Abraham Lincoln spent a night in this room, in a revision of his Cooper Institute speech, in the Winter of 1859. The writer of this article read the first proof-sheet, and, had he saved the manuscript, would have been, at this time, $1,000 in pocket. Edgar A. Poe used to borrow money of Horace Greeley in this apartment. John Brown, Henry Ward Beecher, and Lloyd Garrison have gazed at this library. Viscount de Chalrol, Lord Morley, Lord Camperdown, Thurlow Weed, Kossuth, Jay Cooke, Edwin Forrest, Mrs. Yelverton, Hawthorne, Webster, Clay, Chase, O Baldwin, and Seward have all trodden this floor. Young is a strict disciplinarian. He runs the editorial department like a machine. Every cog strikes its groove with punctual regularity. When he is absent his duties fall on Mr. John R. G. Hassard. If Hassard is missing, Mr. Amos J. Cummings takes the manager s chair, and so perfect does everything jibe, that if all the editors were absent the oldest reporter, like the senior sergeant of a company destitute of commissioned officers, would take charge. An editorial council is held in the Managing Editor s room every day, between the hours of 1 and 2 p. M. Mr. Young presides. Mr. D. C. McEwen, his private secretary, a stenographer, and one of the witnesses in the impeachment trial, sits at his side. The editors are seated about the table. Mr. Hassard, a tall, straight gentleman, with a light complexion, blue eyes, regular features, sandy mustache and side whiskers, and legs like those of President Lincoln, occupies a chair at Mr. Young s left. Mr. Hassard writes English as smooth as the music of a rippling brook, and frequently clashes off an editorial article steeped in an original solution of humour and sarcasm. In addition to his other duties, Mr. Hassaed does the musical criticisms of the paper. Opposite him is Mr. Denslow, for- merly Managing Editor of The Chicago Republican. He has a dark eye, a Napoleonic nose, and a black mustache. He is the only black-eyed editor in the office. His opinions are firm-set, and, though his editorials occasionally conflict with the views of Mr. Greeley, they are marked with deep thought, and are carefully prepared. He usually writes on financial or reconstructive measures, though Mr. Greeley does more of this work AN EDITORIAL COUNCIL. 461 than any other man in the office. At the right of Mr. Hassarcl is Prof. A. J. Schem, the Foreign Editor, and the compiler of The Tribune Alma nac. He is a large, smooth-faced German, with eyes of imperial blue, and a head broad and well balanced, somewhat resembling portraits of Bis marck. His eyes are full of language. He has frequently been mistaken for Mr. Greeley. He compiles the " Foreign News," and writes the edito rials on European and other foreign matters of interest. He has a happy faculty of catching an unconscious nap during the composition of his editorials, which greatly endears him to the Night Editor. His slight accent betrays his Teutonic origin. Mr. Cunimings, the City and Political Editor, sits at the foot of the table, opposite Mr. Young. He is a pale, thin, blue-eyed man, of a nervous-sanguine temperament, and eternally at work. During the editorial councils he listens with deep interest, and fills in the interstices of time by drawing strange characters on the paper before him. He compiles the campaign and presidency columns of the paper, works up election tables, writes editorial paragraphs, dashes through the exchange papers, and takes charge of everything pertaining to poli tical or city matters. Originally a Douglas Democrat, he now believes in God and Horace Greeley. He shudders at the very mention of the " Citi zens Association," and Kit Burns could stand in no greater dread of Henry Bergh than Cummings. The names of both parties suggest im mense manuscript rolls of bad English, backed by heartrending appeals for immediate place in the columns of The Tribune. Cummings has set type in nearly every State in the Union, and was a sergeant-major in the army. He worked at the case in the composing-room for six years, off and on, and was transferred to the Editorial Department during Mr. Gay s administration. On his right is Mr. N. C. Meeker, the successor of Solon Robinson in the Agricultural Department. Mr. Meeker is a thin, spare man, of an olive complexion, with light blue eyes, and a farmer s face, hands and dress. His desk is usually covered with patent rat-traps, pum- kin-seeds, corn-shellers, fancy potatoes, washing-machines, crab-apple*, cucumber-bug killers, and similar vegetables and contrivances. For many years Mr. Meeker wrote for The Tribune those remarkable agricultural letters dated at Dongola, 111., and when the venerable author of " Hot Corn " grew mellow with age, and retired to his farm in Westchester, he was called to fill the vacancy. And well has he done so. Mr. Meeker writes the crop editorials, the Farmers Club reports, and all agricultural articles. Next to Mr. Meeker we find Clarence Cook, the terror of artists and engravers. So trenchant are his criticisms that artists have been known to rim from him on the street as they would at the sight of a mad dog, and in some artistic circles he is entirely tabooed. Writing in a vein of terrible sarcasm, Mr. Cook is singularly mild and pleasant in his demeanour. He would step into the mud to avoid crushing a worm. He has a mild, hazel eye, red whiskers, and dresses in white, wearing glasses and a bob-tailed coat. Mr. Win. Winter, the Dramatic Editor of The Tribune, comes in late he usually does. He is a small, thin gentleman, with straight brown hair, a soft blue eye, and an effeminate mustache 462 IJFE OF HORACE GREELEY. sustains a little straw hat with a big ribbon, and has not been inaptly described as looking like a German Turner going to a funeral. He suc ceeded Ned House as Dramatic Critic. His criticisms are universally regarded as the best in the city. His contributions to the editorial page are spicy and brilliant. Last of all at the table we find Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of Cincinnati, the latest addition to the force. He looks like Theo dore Tilton, with his angular points rubbed off. He talks very easy, and writes ditto. His articles are pithy and argumentative, and have attracted considerable attention. And such are the satellites of Horace Greeley. McConnell, the Night Editor, seldom attends these conferences. Late morning hours forbid. And this is the " staff" of The Tribune. When all are seated Mr. Young nervously dances around his desk for forty seconds, and then dumps on the table a basket piled with manuscripts, memoranda, and newspaper clippings. While these are being assorted a running fire of gossip springs up, and jokes fly about the table. The pile being assorted, business begins. Mr. Young picks up a newspaper slip, looks at it a second, taps it with a sciirvy pair of scissors, and says : " Now, this Associated Press dispatch is evidently a Rebel lie two hun dred armed negroes attack fifty unarmed whites, and two whites are wounded and fifty negroes are killed what perfect nonsense ! Reid, you write an article on this business for to-morrow s paper, and have Dr. Wood look up the other cases in which the Associated Press dispatches are toned by the Rebels." Here the slip is crumpled up, rolled briskly into a little ball between the palms of his hands, and then tossed into the waste basket. A copy of The World goes spinning across the table to Cummings, with the remark: " I think The World beat you in its account of that murder this morn ing." " That s very probable, but we beat them on the fire and a murder in Weehawken," Cummings replies. Young here seizes a pile of manuscript and hands it over to Hassard, without a word. On the back of the pile is written: "Mr. H., please read and report. J. R. T." Another glance at a memorandum, and McEwen is told to telegraph Smalley, in London, to send a man to Roumania immediately, to watch the insurrection there. " And ask ****, in Constantinople, if there is any truth in the report from Washington that the Turks are about to withdraw from Crete. Use the cypher." Both orders are directly filled, a bell-cord is jerked, and in one minute a Tribune boy is trotting to the telegraph office with despatches for London and Constantinople in his pocket. A pile of foreign letters, ranging from Chili to Japan, via Europe, is tossed to Schem, accompanied with the words : " Oh, Schem, I want an editorial from you to-night on Louis Napoleon s suppression of La Lanterne /" AN EDITORIAL COUNCIL. 463 Another glance at a square slip of paper "McEwen, telegraph Jim Young to catch Rosecrans, as he returns to Washington from White Sul phur Springs, and freeze on to him until he gets the nature of that corre spondence, and write McConnell (the night editor) that the news from Atlanta should have been put in leaded brevier, under a pica head, and that O Donnell s Mexican letter should have had an Ed. head." A bundle of foolscap, all about the Pacific Railroad, is here tumbled to Denslow, with the " Read and Report " label, and an order to hunt up a copy of the Georgia State Constitution, and write an editorial on the trouble at Atlanta. Cummings is cautioned, in the same breath, to watch the Atlanta papers for a copy of Turner s speech. Meeker gets a dose of enquiries in odd bundles, asking his opinion as to the best means of keeping turnip-tops free from hen-lice; whether it is best to sow onions during a full moon ; whether children can be poisoned by locusts, and a score of similar manuscript questions. Cummings is told to write an editorial on the yachting season, and is further informed that Mr. Greeley wants a complete list of the Congress and Assembly nominations, so far as made, with the majorities in each district, published as soon as possible. McEwen is told to telegraph " our man " in San Francisco that he is behind in his Japanese and Oregon news. Hassard is given a score of short editorial paragraphs to write; and when the mountain of manuscripts in front of the managing editor has been run through the mill, and a mushroom hill has sprung up in the front of every member of the staff, a roll of standing proofs is overhauled. Here are fifty columns of special correspondence, political and scientific articles, and news matter already in type, and struggling for a place in The Tribune. Fresh proofs of the matter left over from the last issue of the paper are pulled every morning, and are sent to the Managing Editor. He now runs over these proofs, dashing his blue crayon through the unim portant matters, marking " absolutely must " over particular articles, and dotting the sides of the proof sheets with sentences like the following: " Send a proof of this article to Mr. Greeley ;" "get this in as soon as pos sible;" " put this table in half measure;" "send the copy of this to J. R Y.," etc. " McEwen, send this slip to Congdon, and tell him to give us a half column sarcastic review of it, and here is something for Stockton. Mail it the first thing after the meeting." Each editor is then asked for his report of the previous day s labour, after which suggestions from every one present are in order. The meeting is then dismissed, with the words: "The Trib. would look verv well to day were it not for the poor quality of the paper and the infernal press- work. I believe the ink is stiff. We must have book ink. Mr. Greeley will write the leader to-morrow morning, gentlemen. If he don t, I will. Mr. Cook, here is a chromo which I wish you to notice. That s all." The editors pass out the door, through the city apartment into the main editorial room, and drift to their desks. In ten minutes a half dozen pens are vigorously scratching out ideas for the next day s issue. The child 4:64: LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. is in embryo, and will be born in the morning. Everything will move with the regularity of clock-work. The editorial-room resembles a lurk ing place for owls; the ceiling is low, the floor is dirty; a dozen rickety cane-bottomed arm-chairs, with high backs, three cases, filled with books of reference, ten old desks, spattered with ink, two cabinets, a chained copy of The Tribune Almanac, complete, and a dozen old pictures, give an idea of a rushing business, with an occasional dash at the fine arts. We find Mr. Ripley, the Literary Editor, hard at work, with a huge pile of books and magazines in his front. His eye is as bright as ever. He has grown more dignified and portly with the weight of years. He does his work conscientiously. No personal influence or sympathetic appeal will ever induce him to give a favourable notice of any publication unless he honestly thinks it deserves such notice. By this course he has clone more to elevate the standard of American literature than any man in this country. He and Charles A. Dana entered the office over twenty years ago. " Father Ripley," as he is affectionately termed, then received five dollars a week, and for his services Dana drew twelve. Now "Father Ripley " is a stockholder, but still holds his old position, with a good many " Os " to the 5. He is pleasant and sociable with those who never blow tobacco smoke in his face, or eject saliva about his desk. He has an exquisite sense of order and cleanliness, and frequently picks up envelopes and torn pieces of paper littering the floor and tosses them into the waste basket. If he find a pool of tobacco spittle near his desk he will either order an office boy to take a brown piece of paper and scrub the floor or do it himself. He has many distinguished visitors. Sumner, Bancroft, Wilson, and scores of similar men, frequently drop in the office for an hour s chat with Mr. Ripley. A glance at his smiling face and curly iron- gray locks brings to memory the days of Hildreth, Fry, Bayard Taj lor, Margaret Fuller, Gay, Cleveland, Sam. Wilkeson, Oliver Johnson, A. H. Byington, Don. Henderson, Richelieu Robinson, Doesticks, Ottarson, England, Neil, and others. May he live long, and his shadow never be less! Here is a curiosity. Let us look at the cabinet adjoining Cummings s desk. Here are fifty sliding drawers, labelled with names of the various States and Territories. They are filled with political scraps and clippings, all arranged with reference to the label distinguishing the drawer. If you wish to find out the Republican nominee for Congress in the Vlllth Mis souri, or the Vth South Carolina District, or the Democratic candidate for Assembly in the lid Ulster District, or the latest figures from Colorado, Cummings is just the man for you to interrogate. He slides open a particular drawer and gives you the names of the nominees, and the majorities given at the elections within the past four years, at short order. In the bottom drawers of this cabinet we find a series of carefully written obituaries of distinguished live men, all arranged alphabetically, and in charge of Dr. Wood. They are curiosities in their way. Here is a bulky one, as thick and as long as your arm. It is marked " Peter Cooper." Here is a second a Lilliputian roll, small enough to go into a needle-case. We JOHN W. FORNEY, The Philadelphia Press. JOHN RUSSELL, YOUNG, Late with the New- York Tribune. THE NIGHT EDITOR. 4:65 find this labelled "The Life of Walt. Whitman." These obituaries are found valuable when news of a celebrated person s death is received at an early hour in the morning. Thaddeus Stevens died at Washington, at midnight, yet a four-column sketch of his life appeared in The Tribune of that morning. It had been put up in type and was "standing" when the news of his death was received. This was the case with Buchanan and Martin Van Buren, though the latter cheated the office so long that the type was distributed, and the old man, with singular perverseness, died within two days thereafter. This Biographical Bureau is, indeed, a rare feature. In a corner near the door we find a cabinet of post-office boxes, labelled "The Money Market," "Literary," "Foreign News," "The City," "The Drama," "Agricultural," "The Fine Arts," "Music," "Science," "The Fashions," "Telegraphic News," "Managing Editor," etc. Every news paper clipping or manuscript, having any bearing on these subjects, is dropped in its specific box, taken out by the person in charge of each department, and boiled down for use in the papers. Scrap-books, Direc tories, Dictionaries, and Corporation Manuals seem to spring up about the office like chick-weed in a Jersey garden, but, whenever a copy of the Bible or Shakespeare is wanted, a tiresome search is made before the book is found. The lymphatic gentleman on whose desk the Bible is usually found is Mr. George O. Seilhamer, who has charge of The Weekly and Semi- Weekly Tribune. He it was who went to Heart s Content when the Atlan tic Cable was laid, and furnished the paper with an exclusive copy of the Diary of the Great Eastern, after the English Admiral at Halifax had cribbed the Associated Press report for his own personal perusal. Mr. Seilhamer is a pleasant writer, and is the author of the obituaries of Thaddeus Stevens and James Buchanan. At his side sits Mr. Clarkson Taber, a plain country-looking gentleman, who is writing out a report of the cattle-market. He is always thoroughly posted on the price of beef steaks, and, on this account, is held in peculiar reverence by editors and reporters. Fronting Mr. Seilhamer we find Mr. S. T. Clarke, the financial editor, who has groped his way from the sewers of newspaper life to fame and fortune. Here is a quiet, black-whiskered gentleman, plainly dressed ; he has a smiling, ruddy face, and a cast in one of his brown eyes; he is apparently about forty-five years old. This is Mr. R. W. Johnson, a native Jamaican, and formerly the leader of the Liberals in the Jamaica Parliament. He was the real head and front of the Jamaica Insurrection, in which George William Gordon lost his life. A price is fixed on Mr. Johnson s head by the pro-slavery planters of that island, and, though Governor Eyre is absent, it would hardly be safe for him to visit his home. So much for a day view of The Tribune editorial rooms. Come here at midnight and you will find little rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, curly-headed McConnell in charge, dashing off editorial news paragraphs, stripping proofs through his fingers, wading through bulky piles of special corres- 30 466 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. pondence, and rushing about the room like a bright-eyed black-and-tan in a rat-pit. He is a born and bred newspaper man, exercises his judg ment on the instant, and is rarely wrong. During the winter he officiates as Albany correspondent. He has a keen scent for Legislative corruption, and frequently catches thieving Assembly-men by the hind leg, and shakes them before the eyes of the astonished public, with a portion of their plunder still sticking to their claws. Then Mr. E. H. Clement, a college graduate and a Bostonian, tills Mac s place in the office. He is young in years but old in appearance. He and White are the only gentle men connected with The Tribune who part their hair in the middle. At the desk near the door we find Dr. John B. Wood, the Night Editor, through whose hands passes all the telegraph and news matter. In his front lies a magazine of blue crayons, pen-holders, and similar writing material. Fifteen columns of telegrams for The Tribune have passed through Wood s fingers in a single night. You ask me if female reporters and correspondents are employed on The Tribune. They are. Miss Dunning writes the fashion reports ; Miss Kate Field occasionally sends a letter; Miss Booth frequently vouchsafes a readable article ; Mrs. L. G. Calhoun writes sparkling correspondence, and Olive Logan occasionally bubbles over from the Magazines into the Weekly Tribune. Year before last Mrs. Calhoun reported the grandest city balls, and her descriptions of the Arion and Leiderkranz carnivals attracted great attention. *********** Some people think and say that Greeley is The Tribune and that The Tribune is Greeley. There may be some truth in the expression. But one thing is certain, the stockholders of The Tribune are aware of Mr. Greeley s value. They have had his life insured for from $50,000 to $100,000 many years. Mr. Greeley is paid $7,000 a year for his services. This, with his dividend of the profits of the establishment, makes quite a snug sum. He also writes for a dozen magazines and weekley newspapers, beside occa sionally throwing off a book and making stump political speeches and lectures. One day you will hear of him speaking at a Grant meeting at Somerville, New Jersey; the next day he will arraign the Democracy at Honesdale, Pennsylvania; next you will hear of him at a temperance meeting in New- York city; on tue day following he will speak before some tariff associalion, then before some agricultural society, and will top off the week with an address before the Grant and Colfax Club at Chappaqua, his residence. And all the time he keeps his end up on the editorial page. Greeley, without doubt, is to-day the hardest working newspaper man in New- York city. During the past two years the old readers of The Tribune have noticed a marked improvement in the paper. Its columns have grown more sparkling and fervent, and it has conducted the present Presidential cam paign with an energy and skill heretofore unsurpassed. The cause for this change may be found in the youthfulness of its editors. But few of them are above thirty years of age ; but they are steadily growing gray in READING PROOF. 467 the service of the paper, and hard work and late hours cannot fail to speed ily propitiate those of our readers of the old fogy stripe. Dream as -we will of the joys and vigour of our youth, incessant gas-light will induce the inevitable eye-glass in the end. There isn t much sun-light at the hour of going to press, but there is enough care and embarrassment to bleach the luxuriant locks of "love s young dream;" and none can determine the exact course of that strange plow-share of time that leaves its irregular furrow in the cheek and brow. There is one consolation, The Tribune will last longer than any of us. For man and his brain-working may pass away, but the principle that inspires him, if a noble one, will endure forever. We now come to Mr. Cummings s account of the mechanical operations and last hours work on the paper. It must be given with the least possible abridgement: We have seen the editorial rooms. Open the door, and we pass from the City Editor s room into the little entry lighted up with a solitary gas- burner, which feebly flickers night and day. A door, made of wood and ground glass, and labelled " Proof Room," is at our right. It was the pri vate entrance to Mr. Greeley s old room. For ten years Horace composed his editorials in this apartment, until at last he was driven to his present sanctum, above the counting-room, by a steady stream of political vermin, who became familiar with his working hours and the entrances to his room, and who worried him day and night. It was in this room that the material was collected for the Scott and Graham, Fremont and Dayton, and the two Lincoln campaigns. If these half-papered walls could whisper, they would furnish many a missing and interesting chapter for the " Recol lections of a Busy Life." This is the room in which Dana and Gay oiled the machinery for the management of The Tribune. It was in this apart ment that the celebrated Sevvard letter, the equally notorious Kansas editorials, and the "Just Once " article following the battle of Bull Run were written. Mr. Greeley has passed many a weary night on the sofa within this room. As we stand at the door we hear a monotonous burr-r-r-r and whirr-r-r-r, like the complaint of a swift turning fly-wheel in an engine room. The noise is caused by John C. Robinson, who is orally flying over his proof sheets at a 2.40 rate of speed. As the door swings open we take in the room, proof-readers and furniture, at a glance. Here are three desks, four gas lights, hidden under green shades, a small raised platform hugging a tin copy-box, which has just descended from the composing room, and four proof-readers, with damp strips of paper, freshly printed, in their front. On our left we find Mr. Frank Cahill, once the editor of The Picayune, then a soldier who marched with Sherman to the sea, next the projector and proprietor of the National Bull Frog Show at Dodworth s Hall, in 1865 a man who has been a theatrical critic, a valued contributor to Vanity Fair, a police reporter, an editorial writer, a lecturer, a theologian, a starter 4:68 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELET. of a dozen short-lived comic magazines, and a New-York quill driver gen erally for eighteen years. The companion of Edgar Allan Poe, Ned Wilkins, George Arnold, Thodore Winthrop, Fitz-James O Brien, Artemus Ward, Joseph C. Neal, and others of that really distinctive class of Bohe mians, Mr. Cahill is one of the few men in this city who could lift the yellow veil from the dead faces of that brilliant youthful literary constella tion, now blotted out forever, paint a true pen-picture of their social habits, and tell the story of their short but eventful lives. Cahill handles a proof sheet like an expert, and mumbles the printed words into the ears of the copy-holder at his side like a drowsy bumble-bee. In the farther corner John Robinson says Num-num-tuition, num-num-cation, nnm-num Num-num-olution, num-num-eration, num-num, in a falsetto tone, hour after hour rolling obituaries, horse races, mar riages, buchu advertisements, Clarence Cook s art criticisms, Greeley s ponderous logic, ship news, Young s rapier-like sentences, and Bayard Taylor s and Albert D. Richardson s letters from his tongue in the same monotonous song, as if they were strung together like a medley on a hurdy-gurdy. Every twenty seconds he makes a quick gasp for breath, and the full lungs and glib tongue again send out a string of clearly enun ciated syllables and polysyllables, like the quavers and demi-semi-quavers bubbling from the bosom and dancing from tlie strings of Ole Bull s vio lin. Robinson is, without doubt, the fastest proof reader in the world. He marks his corrections on the side of the proof sheet without ceasing his reading. A quick eyed copy-holder is required to follow Robinson s tongue, even on reprint copy. Robinson himself has an eye like a hawk, and, in reading a proof sheet, his eyes are generally at least five lines beyond his tongue. I have known him to distinctly enunciate a column of fine agate type, Tribune measure, in nine minutes. In October, 1863, he was timed by Benjamin L. Glasby and S. T. Selleck, two of the best compositors ever employed on The Tribune, when he read and marked the proof sheet corrections of fourteen columns of solid nonpariel in an hour and twenty minutes. This was done on a wager for seven dollars. The sheets were afterwards carefully read by an experienced proofreader, and but two typographical blunders (both turned s s) discovered. Robinson came to the office, a boy, in 1854, and has remained there ever since. Joe Barlow, the pleasant English-faced copy-holder at his side, has been a compositor and proof-reader in the same office for fifteen years. Eminent men have held positions in The Tribune proof room. The Hon. George Brown, once the leading member of the Canadian Parliament, Alexander Mackenzie, notorious as the leader of the Canadian Rebellion in 1839, and Dr. Palmer, a well known compiler, once held situations here. 1 During the past year Thomas J. O Conner, a brilliant and gifted young proof-reader, who had been in the office since boyhood, has died. A readable volume could be written on reminiscences of The Tribune proof room. Four men are constantly employed in reading the matter put in type by the fifty-five FOREMAN "TOM" ROOKER. 469 compositors on the floor above. One man is required to arrange the man uscript copy for the first reading, after which the proof is sent up stairs and corrected. A second or revise sheet of the same matter is then struck, which, with the original proof, is sent down to Tom Robinson, the MSS. arranger, who compares it with the first sheet. If the corrections have all been made he marks it " O. K." and sends it up stairs. The type is then ready to be thrown into the paper. And now let us visit Tom Rooker. Tom has been the foreman of the composing room over twenty years. He owns five shares in the paper. We find him at his desk, within five feet of the door, writing out a general order for the government of the compositors, and giving loud orders to his assistants at the same time. He is in his shirt sleeves. A short check apron girts his body like a breast-plate, hardly reaching high enough to cover the diamond studs winking from his shirt bosom. Mr. Rooker is a man known by printers in every State in the Union. He has a clear black eye, a head of bushy iron-gray hair, and has an appearance of dignity more than commensurate with his official position. In the realm of Tribune typog raphy his word is law. And it is xiniversally conceded that, in point of typographical neatness, the paper is not surpassed by any journal on either continent. Rooker asks every stranger for a " chaw tobacco," and talks to his compositors like a Dutch uncle to his nephews. He is a man of inven tions, and has spent thousands of dollars in efforts to improve the mechan ical department of the paper. Years ago he formed the idea that a morning paper could be stereotyped the same as a book, and thus, instead of one form of the paper being worked off on one press, a half dozen forms of the same newspaper could be simultaneously thrown upon the same number of presses. Thus the public could be served with a million copies of The Tribune before daylight each morning, if necessary. Two birds could be killed with one stone for the use of a stereotype plate would prevent the fearful crushing and mashing of type which accompanied the issue of 200,000 copies of The Weekly Tribune. Year after year Rooker tinkered at his idea, but with indifferent success. At length he heard that The London Times was printed from stereotype plates. How the plates were stereotyped was a mystery as impenetrable as the mystery of the philosopher s stone. Two Swiss brothers alone held the key of the mys tery, and did the job for The Times under contract. Tom wrote the broth ers, and received a reply to the effect that they would put The Tribune through their mill for $30,000 annually. Feeding a Hoe press a weekly meal of type was an expensive job, but hardly so costly as giving the Swiss brothers an annual meal of $30,000. Tom thought he could do better. He at once again began to chisel out his ideas, with varying success. For days he would wander about the office in fits of brown study, and then, fancying himself on the verge of success, would caper among the typos, and laugh at their sly insinuations at his crazy mania, like an urchin who had just learned to toss off his first soap-bubble. But success came at last. One day a stranger walked into the composing room, shook hands with Tom, and said he had come to stereotype The Tribune. The compositors 470 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELKY. winked at one another, and suggested that the fool-killer had not lately been attending to his business; but Tom Rooker shoved a paper of "Mrs. Miller s fine cut" in his cheek, stripped off his apron, put on his Panama hat and sailed out of the office in company with the stranger. Two days after this a huge iron vat for melting lead came up the hatchway from the press room. The compositors laughed, and said that Tom had got a coffee boiler. Another week passed, and a fly-wheel, two cog-wheels, and circu lar saw followed the iron vat. The t} r pos chuckled and whistled, and one made the remark, " Tom s got em bad this time." Belts, molds, and a steam chest came next. The thing began to look as if it meant something. At last, one pleasant summer afternoon in 1860, the rush of wheels and the sharp rasp of a circular saw filled the front room, and a smoking mass of hot lead was drawn from the mold and laid upon the table. The deed was done. The first newspaper in America had been stereotyped, and Tom Hooker s heart was as light as a school-boy s. During the period of Tom s anxious experiments a practical journeyman stereotyper was chasing up the same idea, and had succeeded in inventing a peculiar kind of paper, which, when dampened, was beaten on the face of the type, then covered with blankets and dried upon a steam chest, after which it was powdered with plaster-of-paris, laid in a mold, and a plate produced which was the exact counterpart of the face of the type. The Tribune adopted the sys tem immediately. Eighteen months afterwards the Times and the Herald followed suit. Now the leading newspapers throughout the United States are stereotyped. After the paper is issued the plates are again tossed into the furnace, the matrix or the paper mold being preserved for future use, if necessary. But Tom was not satisfied. It took nearly an hour to stereo type the forms, and get the plates ready for the press. He began making improvements, and has now got the thing down to such a fine point that a stereotype plate is dropped on the press in from sixteen to twenty minutes from the time that the type is sent from the hands of the printers. Come into the composition room at five minutes of seven in the even ing. The desk near the door is littered with copy. Fifty printers are lounging about the office in their shirt sleeves and aprons, smoking, dis tributing tj-pe, correcting proofs, swearing over the poor quality of the gas, and asking what number jumped out first in the evening drawing of the Kentucky or Delaware lotteries. Each compositor has a stand and a rack, in which are four sets of cases: one for agate type, used for setting up advertisements; another filled with nonpareil, a type a, size larger, in which the main body of the news matter is set ; a third filled with minion type, which is used for the special despatches from Washington, and for import ant news despatches and correspondence ; and the fourth and last filled with brevier, in which the editorials appear. The copy which is to go in agate is cut into sections or "takes," as the compositor calls them, and strung on a hook hidden in a box labeled " agate." The brevier, nonpa reil, and minion copy are also placed on hooks, in separate boxes, labeled with reference to the face of the type. One man is employed solely in cutting the copy into sections or "takes," and marking directions for the SETTING UP THE TRIBUNE. 471 type in which the captions and sub-captions of articles are to appear. Take The Tribune of October 28, 1868, for example, and the manuscript of the first column, fresh from the hands of the copy-cutter, would read thus: THE NEW REBELLION. [Pica Caps. [Misery dash. REBEL RIOTS IN NEW ORLEANS. [Minion caps. THE REBEL DEMOCRACY IN ARMS, AND SHOOTING NEGROES IN THE STREETS. [Brevier small caps. Then follows a mark, "leaded nonpareil," which means that the copy is to be leaded ; that is, that a thin piece of metal is to be inserted between each two lines of type, as is the case with this article which now appears in Packard s Monthly. A little lower down in this "New Rebellion" article we find an order from Gen. Schofield, which is marked by the copy- cutter in "solid nonpareil." This means that the leads are to be left out until otherwise directed. And thus every strip of copy is dotted with guide posts and sign boards, so that the compositor cannot go astray. Here are twenty men carrying oft twenty pieces or " takes " of one article. "We will suppose it to be an editorial of Mr. Greeley s. The copy-cutter slashes it into twenty pieces of about twenty lines each. The first piece he marks with a blue crayon " 1 G," the second piece "2 G," the third "3 G," and so on up to "20 G." The compositors take these pieces from the hook as fast as they are out of copy, and as soon as each piece is put in type the matter is placed on a brass galley (similar to a board with a light strip of wood on each side), and a small square piece of white paper, marked "6 G," or whatever number designates the piece just finished by the compositor, is deposited at its side. You may find "2" and "3 G" hugging each other on the galley, followed by "5," "6," and "7 G," with a space left for " 4 G " when finished. When the 20 G s are all in their places the galley of type is fastened by a curly-headed gentleman, known as "the galley slave," who strikes five proof sheets one for Mr. Greeley; a second for Mr. Clements, the editor in charge at night; a third for the proof room; a fourth for Dr. Wood, the regular night editor; and a fifth, on yellow paper, as a voucher for the work done by each man. So Gree ley s article is in type in half an hour, and Horace carefully marks his corrections on the proof-sheet, and saunters home with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. By the arrangement described above, a dozen or twenty articles may be in process of composition at the same time. One manuscript will be numbered " 1 XX," and so on. The commercial review generally goes out marked " Com.," the markets " Ma.," the Washington special " Wa.," Young s editorial " 1 Y," &c., and Hassard s spicy criti cisms " Has.," &c. The men in the office are numbered, and each man is known by his number. When he gets his copy lie begins his composition by placing a metal slug, on which his number is inscribed, at the head of each piece or 472 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. "take " of manuscript drawn from the copy hook. This number is printed on the proof sheets at the head of each "take." When the proof returns from the readers Frank Weinheimer seizes it, runs his eye down the mar gin until he discovers a typographical blunder, spots the number under which it has occurred, and sings out, at the top of his voice, "Proof for No. , in a hurry." The compositor owning the number picks up the galley, and corrects it down to a point where he finds four blunders under one number, when he passes it to said number, and so the proof runs the gauntlet until all the corrections are made. It is then passed up to the " galley slave," who pulls a fresh proof the numbers having been drawn out and distributed which is sent back to the proof readers. When the revise returns the galley is passed up to the "make-up" the gentleman who places the type in its proper position in the paper. Frequently slugs of "MUST," "ABSOLUTELY MUST," and " WAIT ORDERS," are placed at the top of various articles. They explain themselves. The yellow proof-sheets used as vouchers show the quantity of type set by each compositor, and are clipped every morning, the "takes" assorted according to their num bers, and distributed among their owners. On Friday each compositor pastes the proofs thus received together, in long strips, according to the face of the type, which are measured by ems, at 56 cents per thousand, and for which the typo receives his money on Saturday. A printer s "em" is a space equivalent to the square of the body of the letter m that letter being adopted as the unit of measurement in composition, from its convenient proportions. In a line of the finest type used in The Tribune there are 35 of these ems. In 100 lines there are 3,500. The type is measured from a schedule of 100 lines, printed thus: No. Lines. 1 No. Ems. . 35 No. Lines. 5 No. Ems. 175 No. Lines. 9 No. Ems. .. 315 No. Lines. 13 No. Ems. 455 2 70 6 210 10 . . 350 14 490 3 ..105 7 245 11 ...385 15 525 4.. ..140 8... ..280 12... ..420 16.. ..560 And so on from 16 up to 100, and from 560 up to 3,500. Of course the schedule consists of a straight columi; of 100 lines, the above being broken into four pieces to save space. Now a compositor hands a long string of yellow slips or "takes" pasted together to the measurer. He draws a common string over the length of the pasted slips. He then draws the string (that is, the slips as measured on the string) over the printed sched ule, as given above. As each hundred lines is measured on the string he counts "One!" "Two!" "Three!" "Four!" "Five!" "Six!" "Seven!" That is seven lengths of string, or 700 lines. Go back to the figures pointed above. Look at the figure 7 in the second column, headed " No. lines." Opposite the 7 you find the figures 245. Add two O s to the 245 and you have 24,500 the exact number of ems contained In the seven THE COMPOSITION-KOOM. 473 lengths of string. If you have nine lengths, go to the figure 9, and you have 31,500 ems, and so on to 10, 11, &c. Of course what is left over of 100 lines is readily measured on the schedule. This is another one of Tom Hooker s inventions. By it one man could measure the week s work of 600 type setters in ten hours, and it would hardly be possible to make a mistake. I have said that there are fifty -five compositors in these rooms. Count ing assistants and stereotypers there are over seventy persons here. There are over 100 gas burners. The ceilings are low in some places, and though every appliance of modern ventilation has been used, the rooms are ill ventilated. With over 100 gas burners and a hot furnace fire in the stereo type room, the thermometer, during the bottomless-pit weather of July last, frequently at midnight stood at 108, and once reached 113. This, with the antirnonial gas escaping from the stereotype room, would have been enough to kill a bluff farmer, but the pale host of type stickers held their own. The Tribune compositors, with the exception of a half dozen men who work exclusively by daylight, reach the office about 1 p. M. Three or four hours are then consumed in distributing the type for the night s work. From five to six they drop off to supper, returning about ten min utes of seven. As the hour of seven approaches they swarm around the copy hooks like bees about a sugar cask At five minutes of seven the Chairman of the office shouts: " Well, it s time sail in ! Who s first out ? " This "first out" is an important matter. It takes in the " fattest " slice of copy in the office, and this frequently turns out a five or an eight dollar job, in one, two, or three hours. The " first out " goes from one number to another on each succeeding night. "Eighteen s first out! Number Eighteen, come up to the bull ring!" shouts the Chairman. Eighteen delicately slips his "take " from the hook and drifts to his case, amid the ironical oh s and ah s of his companions, who kindly offer him fabulous sums of money for his luck. " Number Nineteen ! " cries the Chairman. Nineteen " snakes " his take from the hook. "Number Twenty!" and Twenty follows suit, and thus they go until every man is supplied with copy. The men lay their copy on their cases, and stand, stick in hand, but not a type is picked up until at precisely 7 o clock, when the Chairman cries "Time! S-1-i-n-g em ! " The type rattle in fifty-five sticks at once, and for ten minutes hardly anything is heard but the steady " click, click " of the metal letters within the steel sticks. The proof-room bell rings, and the bell boy runs up the tin box, and draws therefrom a proof sheet. " Proof for Number ! " yells the boy. Some droll typo remarks: "Oh, no, that can t be must be some mis take somewhere ! " 474 LIFE OF HORACF GREELEY. As No. happens to be a notoriously incorrect compositor, a general laugh follows. No. retorts with an intimation that the droll typo is suffering from an attack of the jim-jams, and a steady stream of jokes and sarcastic allusions follow, until some witty genius says, in a grave voice. " Now we ll have the opening chorus!" accompanying it with a song, usually chanted by a brother typo when on a spree, and another round of laughter follows. " Who s got 9 G ! " shouts a wiry little fellow, adding, sotto voce, " Hang the copy! I believe three weeks at a writing-school wouldn t hurt Greeley ! " " Hang your copy on the hook if you can t read it! " shouts an unsym- pathizing companion. "Oh, he can read it well enough! " chimes in another. "There s a fat take on the agate hook, and he s a layin for it that s what s the matter ! " Here Captain Holmes, a veteran one-legged typo, opens the door, ten minutes late, as usual, and sails for his case like a weather-beaten frigate. The rattle and clatter of fifty-five sticks beating a tattoo on the cases salute him. The Captain growls like a boatswain on a man-of-war, then tosses one crutch under his cases, jerks off his coat, and propped on his remaining crutch, rolls up his shirtsleeves with the majesty of an Ajax en dSsJiabillS. He shakes up the few type remaining in his case, gets his copy, and immediately wants to know if "any gentleman has any lower case agate p s to give out?" " Come here, Captain," shouts a comrade, and the Captain stumps off, and returns with a fist full of letters, which he dumps in his pbox. Then the Captain begins composition. In ten minutes a row breaks out. The Captain discovers a nest of b s in his p box, and shouts out, "Ah, Number Twenty, what did you give me when I went to your case ?" " Gave you what you asked for, of course lower case agate b s." " Yu-6e dam ! I asked for p s-for-putty, and you gave me b s-for-butter !" As the Captain is known as an inveterate borrower, a roar of laughter breaks from the whole room, and the Captain subsides into a low, lion-like growl. Here a comrade enters the room, and says that he knows nothing about the row, but he will bet five dollars that the Captain is right, for he never knew him to be wrong in his life. Derisive cheers follow, and the Cap tain s indignation again flames forth, and gradually subsides into the stereotyped growl. A long silence, dotted with the " click, click " of the type, follows. At 10 o clock Clement comes up stairs, and designates the articles to go in on the first side of the paper. Sam Walter, the old and trusty night foreman, whose Chesterfieldian qualities have endeared him to every printer who has stuck a type in The Tribune office for the last eighteen years, dumps the type in the form, amid much tribulation over the work of some " infernal blacksmith," who has corrected nonpareil type with minion, and the pages slide off to the stereotyper s room. "GOOD NIGHT." 475 Chesterfield soaps his hands with an hysteric laugh, because the form has gone in in good time, and rushes for Oliver Hitchcock s coffee and cake saloon. Dan Eimball, his assistant, rubs his bald head and begs a fresh chew of tobacco. Silence again. A noise from the stereotype room is heard. At first you think it a female spanking an undressed urchin. It is the "spat, spat" of the stereotypers brushes. They are beating the prepared paper, described elsewhere, on the face of the type. The door of the composing room opens, and a huge basket, with a large sized coffee kettle, hanging on the arm of a venerable Scotch woman, enters. " Yere s yer coffee !" yells the bell boy. Sticks are dropped, stools are overturned, and a stampede in the direc tion of the huge basket ensues. Old Dodge, with the exception of Cyrus Harmon and Billv Newman, the oldest compositor in the office, draws a roll of bread and butter from his overcoat pocket, mounts a stool, and for ten minutes masticates his food over an old copy of The Boston Inves tigator. At midnight the copy gives out. Clement is sent for, and asked for copy. He has none. " Shall I let off a couple of phalanxes ?" inquires Kimball. " No, sir," is the reply ; " I expect a four column telegraphic report of Stanton s speech at Cleveland." " Bogus is in order. Put your names down on the slate as fast as you re out of copy," cries Kimball, and down go a dozen names. When copy gives out the compositors are put to work on matter never used in the paper. This is termed "bogus matter." The office allows the men this privilege, because it would be unjust to require them to hang around the office waiting for copy, in the dead hours of night, without appropriate remuneration. By 2 A. M. Stanton s speech is all in. The men are divided into seven phalanxes, which are let off, phalanx after phalanx, as their services are no longer needed. "Have you got good night from Washington yet, Clem?" asks Kim ball. "Yes, Jim Young" shut up an hour ago, but the Associated Press is telegraphing its usual mess of stuff about the Land Office and the Statistical Bureau. Let off four phalanxes!" Kimball shouts, " First, third, fifth, and seventh phalanxes, close up and slope!" The wearied typos drop their sticks, and totter down the iron stairs. At 2.30 A. M. Dr. Wood comes up from the editorial room, and tosses a blue tissue sheet of paper on the table, with the words "Good Night" thereon. "No more copy! Here s a proof for the Correcting Phalanx!" comes from Sam Walter, and the work of the typo is done. The type is pitched into the pages, which must be into the stereotype room by 3 A. M., for the paper to catch the mails, and after a hard half hour s sweating, fretting, swearing and tearing, the newspaper ship is The Washington correspondent. 476 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. launched for the day, and by 4 A. M. a dull rumbling in the lower regions announces that the presses are masticating paper thoughts and ideas that will be scattered throughout the Union before the morning hour again rolls around. The work on the Semi or Weekly Tribune follows. The Tribune compositors earn from $20 to $35 per week. During the war bills frequently ran up to $50 and even $70 per week. The man who get the " display head-lines," over announcements of glorious victories, occasionally made the latter sum the lines measuring by ems the same as the body of the type below them. Common Councilmen, well known authors, generals, editors, and ministers have sprouted in The Tribune composing rooms. The printers who formerly stuck type at the side of Horace Greeley have died out of the office. Horace, himself, though a practical printer, rarely visits the composing room. The last time the writer saw him at work in the composition-room was at 3 o clock in the morning following President Lincoln s election, when he ran his eye over the type of the New York election table on the editorial page, and sud denly cried out : " Here, Sam, bring me a bodkin ; some infernal fool has spelled Allegany with an h!" And though the pressmen were impatiently clanging the bells for the forms, Horace deliberately drew a jack-knife from his pocket and dug the h out of Allegany before he would allow the form to go down. In Henry Clay times Mr. Greeley occasionally "made up the forms" of the paper him self. It was rather a tough job on election nights, when the news of a Whig walloping would roll in the office, and old Major French, one of his compositors, and a sturdy Democrat, would lounge around the "make up " and crow over the Democratic victory. Greeley would quietly chuckle, and " guess that the boot would go on the other leg next time." As a rule, thoroughly competent printers have better judgment and more discriminating newspaper tact than editors manufactured out of collegiate graduates. The majority of the printers of the Tribune office are to-day better posted on general news matters than a majority of The Tribune editors. When will newspaper managers learn to use the raw material, lying under their very noses? I have known owners of journals to run from one end of the country to the other in a vain search for a competent Managing Editor, when little fellows setting type in their own offices were fully able and competent to get out just such newspapers as were wanted in their various sections. When practical printers take editorial charge of newspapers, both newspapers and printers invariably thrive ; can the same be said of collegiate graduates ? Mr. Parton visited The Tribune office one morning before day-light. He gives a graphic description of it as it then was: FOLDING THE TitmUNB. 4:77 We are in The Tribune s press-room. It is a large, low, cellar-like apart ment, unceiled, white-washed, inky, and unclean, with a vast folding table in the middle, tall heaps of dampened paper all about, a quietly-running steam engine of nine-horse power on one side, twenty-five inky men and boys variously employed, and the whole brilliantly lighted up by jets of gas, numerous and flaring. On one side is a kind of desk or pulpit, with a table before it, and the whole separated from the rest of the apartment by a rail. In the pulpit, the night clerk stands, counts and serves out the papers, with a nonchalant and graceful rapidity, that must be seen to be appreciated. The regular carriers were all served an hour ago ; they have folded their papers and gone their several ways ; and early risers, two miles off, have already read the news of the day. The later newsboys, now, keep dropping in, singly, or in squads of three or four, each with his money ready in his hand. Usually, no word passes between them and the clerk ; he either knows how many papers they have come for, or they show him by exhibiting their money ; and in three seconds after his eye lights upon a newly-arrived dirty face, he has counted the requisite number of papers, counted the money for them, and throws the papers in a heap into the boy s arms, who slings them over his shoulder and hurries off for his sup ply of Times and Heralds. Occasionally a woman comes in for a few papers, or a little girl, or a boy so small that he cannot see over the low rail in front of the clerk, and is obliged to announce his presence and his desires by holding above it his little cash capital in his little black paw. In another part of the press-room, a dozen or fifteen boys are folding papers for the early mails, and folding them at the average rate of thirty a minute. A boy Jias folded sixty papers a minute in that press-room. Each paper has to be folded six times, and then laid evenly on a pile; and the velocity of movement required for the performance of such a minute s work, the reader can have no idea of till he sees it done. Asa feat, nothing known to the sporting world approaches it. The huge presses, that shed six printed leaves at -a stroke, are in deep vaults adjoining the press-room. They are motionless now, but the gas that has lighted them during their morning s work still spurts out in flame all over them, and men with blue shirts and black faces are hoisting out the "forms" that have stamped their story on thirty thousand sheets. The vaults are oily, inky, and warm. 3 Instead of the vast folding-table seen twenty years ago by Mr. Parton, we should now find a number of folding-machines, "fed" by boys, very much as the press is "fed" by men. Into one of these machines a Tribune enters in one large sheet, and out it presently drops, folded ready for the carrier or for mailing. The immense editions of The Tribune are thus folded in an incredibly short time. Observing the wonderfully 3 Life of Horace Greeley, pp. 392-3. 4:78 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. rapid, the almost miraculously delicate, exact movements of press and folding-machines, one can hardly help being impressed with the idea that they are living beings, possessed of minds; and I dare say that Mr. Fitzpatrick, long press foreman, so loves "the old machine," the press, that he has often found himself musing upon the question, whether, when it and he shall have done all their work in this world, they shall meet in heaven; and if not what he is to do with himself? The world of New- York in the main has only to do with The Tribune counting-room It requires great business ability and tact to conduct the financial affairs of a daily journal. The disbursements of The Tribune frequently reach ten thou sand dollars a day, and. Mr. Cummings informs us, in the articles from which we have so largely quoted, that they have exceeded $1,000,000 a year. Transactions are had with per sons in all portions of the globe. There is in no other business with so great a variety of transactions. Mr. Samuel Sinclair " is the lever which keeps all these things in perpetual motion." Mr. Sinclair entered the office early in the reign of Mr. McEl- rath, at a salary of nine dollars a week. He is now the largest stockholder, a man of great wealth. Quiet, modest, he has conducted the immense and varied business affairs of the office for years with most notable success financially, and in rare harmony with the editorial rooms. For, be it known, there is apt to be irrepressible conflict between the counting-rooms and the editorial rooms of a great journal. The heads of each are liable to view things from different stand-points. 4 "Will it pay?" is a natural inquiry of the business manager. "Is it right?" is the question to be- decided by the great editor. It *I recollect that when, in 1868, The Chicago Tribune declined to join in the unreasonable, fanatical clamour against Senator Trumbull and others who had refused to vote for the impeachment of President Johnson, and when sales were rapidly falling off in consequence, Mr. Alfred Cowles, business manager, never for an instant flinched; not one whit more than Horace White himself. " O," said Cowles, " The Chicago Tribune has lived through worse storms than this ; and will live through many more. If it can t, it ought to die." If we had more such business managers as Samuel Sinclair and Alfred Cowles, we should have additions to the num ber of great journals TRIBUNE DEMOCRACY. 479 requires a fine business man, of unusually comprehensive mind, and of unflinching pluck, to percieve ever that it is in the long run profitable for a great journal to be right. In Mr. McElrath and in Mr. Sinclair, as publishers of The Tribune, Horace Greeley was wisely fortunate. A great day in tne establishment of The Tribune is " Weekly Day." This edition of the paper has long been so immense that to print, fold, and mail it, taxes all the capacity of the working men and machinery of the office. When Mr. Parton made his extended visit to The Tribune office, the edition of the Weekly numberd over 100,000 copies, a number which was afterwards greatly augmented. "It is Thursday," he says, " the day of The Weekly Tribune, the inside of which began to be printed at seven in the morning. Before the day closes the whole edition, one hundred and sixteen thousand, forty- eight cart-loads, will have been printed, folded, wrapped, bundled, bagged, and carried to the post-office." A fact which will strike any one upon a visit to The Tribune office is what I will call its democratic management. Here is a copy of a notice in the composition-room : " Gentlemen desiring to wash and soak their distributing matter will please use hereafter the metal galleys I had cast for the purpose, as it is ruinous to galleys having wooden sides to keep wet type in them locked up. THOS. N. HOOKER." Mr. Parton is of opinion that it took the world an unknow r n number of thou sand years to arrive at that word "gentlemen." And after wards, commenting upon the topic of this paragraph, he says with great beauty and truth: There is something extremely pleasing in the spectacle afforded by a large number of strong men cooperating in cheerful activity, by which they at once secure their own career, and render an important service to the public. Such a spectacle The Tribune Building presents. At present men show to best advantage when they are at work; we have not yet learned to sport with grace and unmixed benefit; and still further are we from that stage of developement where work and play become one. But The Tribune Building is a very cheerful place. No one is oppressed or degraded ; and, by the minute subdivision of labour in all departments, there is seldom any occasion for hurry or excessive exertion. The distinc tions which there exist between one man and another, are not artificial, 4:80 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. but natural and necessary ; foreman and editor, office-boy and head clerk, if they converse together at all, converse as friends and equals; and the posts of honour are posts of honour, only because they are posts of diffi culty. In a word, the republicanism of the Continent has corne to a focus at the corner of Nassau and Spruce streets. There it has its nearest approach to practical realization ; thence proceeds its strongest expression. On the tenth day of April, 1871, The Tribune became thirty years of age. Upon that day, it contained a leading article by Mr. Greeley, which gave a comprehensive resum/ of the his tory of its growth from the dreary, stormy day of its founding up to that time. The article should be here reproduced: The Daily Tribune was first issued on the 10th of April, 1841 ; it has therefore completed its thirtieth, and to-day enters upon its thirty-first year. It was originally a small folio sheet, employing, perhaps, twenty persons in its production; it is now one of the largest journals issued in any part of the world, containing ten to fifteen times as much as at first, and embodying in each issue the labour of four to five hundred persons as writers, printers, etc., etc. Its daily contents, apart from advertisements, would make a fair 12mo volume, such as sells from the bookstores for $1.25 to $1.50; and when we are compelled to issue a supplement, its editorials, correspondence, dispatches, and reports (which seldom leave room for any but a mere shred of selections) equal in quantity an average octavo. The total cost of its production for the first week was $525 ; it is now nearly $20,000 per week, with a constant, irresistible tendency to increase. Other journals have been established by a large outlay of capital, and many years of patient, faithful effort : The Tribune started on a very small capital, to which little has ever been added except through the abundance and liberality of its patrons. They enabled it to pay its way almost from the outset; and, though years have intervened, especially during our great Civil War, when, through a sudden and rapid advance in the cost of paper and other materials, our expenses somewhat exceeded our income, yet, taking the average of these thirty years, our efforts have been amply generously rewarded, and the means incessantly required to purchase expensive machinery, and make improvements on every hand, have been derived exclusively from the regular receipts of the establishment. Ren dering an earnest and zealous, though by no means an indiscriminate support, for the former half of its existence to the Whig, and through the latter half to the Republican Party, The Tribune has asked no favour of either, and no odds of any man but that he should pay for whatever he choose to order, whether in the shape of subscriptions or advertisements. Holding that a journal can help no party while it requires to be helped itself, we hope so to deserve and retain the good will of the general public that we may be as independent in the future as we have been in the past. So long as slavery cursed our country, this journal was its decided and ME. GREELEY S "CROTCHET." 481 open, though not reckless adversary; now that slavery is dead, we insist that the spirit of caste, of inequality, of contempt for the rights of the coloured races, shall be buried in its grave. The only reason for their existence having vanished, it is logical and just that they should vanish also. Since the substance no longer exists, the shadow should promptly disappear. The protection, looking to the developement of our home industry, by duties on imports, discriminating with intent to uphold and fortify weak and exposed departments thereof, has ever been, in our view, the most essential and beneficent feature of a true national policy. Our country has always increased rapidly in production, in wealth, in population, and in general comfort, when protection was in the ascendant, while it has been cursed with stagnation, paralysis, commercial revulsions, and wide spread bankruptcies under the sway of relative free trade. This journal stood for protection under the lead of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Walter Forward, George Evans, Thomas Corwin, and their compeers ; it stands for protection to-day as heartily as it did then, and for identical reasons. It asks no Free-trader to forego his economic views in order to be a Repub lican ; it insists that no Protectionist shall be bullied out of his convictions in deference to the harmony of the party. It asks no more than it con cedes, and will be satisfied with no less. If the Republican Party shall ever be broken up on the Tariff Question, it will take care that the respon sibility is placed where it belongs. The editor of The Tribune was also its publisher and sole proprietor when it first commended itself to public attention. He has long ago ceased to be publisher, and is now but one among twenty proprietors. As the work required has grown, it has been divided, and in part assigned to others, but the chief direction and supervision of its columns has been continued in his hands, and is likely to remain there so long as his strength shall endure. Half his life has been devoted to this journal, the former half having been mainly given to preparation for its conduct; and now few remain who held kindred positions in this city on the 10th of April, 1841. His only editorial assistant then, though several years his junior, was, after a brilliant independent career, suddenly called away in 1869, leaving behind him few equals in general ability; and of those who aided in the issue of our No. 1, but two are known to be still living, and arc among our co-proprietors, still rendering daily service in the establish ment, and rejoicing in the possession of health and unfailing strength. Ten years more, and these three will probably have followed their asso ciates already departed But The Tribune, we fondly trust, will survive and flourish after we shall, have severally deceased, being sustained by the beneficence of its aims, the liberality of its spirit, and the generous appreciation of an intelligent and discerning people. There are many who will think they find here the conclusive evidence of Mr. Greeley s "crotchet." He gives twice as much space to the subject of " the developement of our home 31 482 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. industry, by duties on imports," as to the subject of all men s equality before the law; and passes without mention what The Tribune had done in behalf of "lands for the landless;" the Pacific railroad; the emancipation and the elevation of Labour. It will have to be admitted that with Mr. Greeley " Protection " was a crotchet; that it was an anomaly in his general philos ophy as to government and human rights; that in all things else opposed to the unrepublican notion of " paternal govern ment," herein he was an earnest devotee of a deduction of a general principle, which principle he often combatted as erroneous and vicious. We see, in reading the foregoing article, at a single glance, the history, in dim outline, of The Tribune during a period of thirty years. This embraced an era of remarkable events ; of wonderful progress; of the triumph of many great ideas. The facilities of trade and commerce were during this period vastly increased. When Mr. Greeley founded The Tribune it would have taken him longer to go to Chicago, than in 1871 it would have taken him to go to San Francisco. The tele graph had been invented, and its marvels come to be as common as the sunshine. Cheap postage had become a prac tical reality. American slavery had been abolished. Revolu tions had occurred in Europe, resulting in benefits to the people. The masses of his own countrymen had placed them selves on a high plane of intelligence and morality. The practical enjoyment of religious freedom had been widely extended. Genuine democracy had won many signal victories; error and wrong in government and society had received not a few memorable defeats. For millions of mankind great good had been accomplished. For the accomplishment of all the positive good; for the eradication of the evils which have passed away, The New- York Tribune laboured, in season and out of season. Not a struggling people anywhere rising against injustice and oppres sion, but found a sympathetic and a working friend in Horace Greeley and his journal. Whosoever it was that sought to do good was sure to find an efficient ally in The Tribune; and MR. GREELEY S EDITORIAL GENIUS. 483 men who undertook to accomplish evil were sure to find in that journal stern and steady opposition. Whoever seeks a faithful daguerreotype of the progress of mankind during the years which have passed since the founding of The Tribune will find it in the columns of that newspaper. I do not here bpeak of the mere publication of events as they occurred; of mere journalistic enterprise. I mean to say that The Tribune sympathized with every advance movement, and was part and parcel of it; that the victories of philanthropy, of truth, of justice, of human rights have been also triumphs of the jour nal founded by Horace Greeley. The victories of peace are no less renowned than those of war. A history of all that has contributed to the welfare of the people of all lands, since the tenth day of April, 1841, is also a history of The New- York Tribune. As I shall not have occasion to devote another chapter to a glance at Tribune history in detail, I may here, so far as this special portion of Mr. Greeley s life is concerned, bid it a final farewell, though at the risk, in what I purpose now to say, of referring to some matters which have been before treated of in this volume, and others which it may be necessary again to mention. Though Horace Greeley was many times during the course of his life painfully deceived by individuals in whom he placed confidence, and this in business as well as in political affairs, his judgment of men who could best aid him in the conduct of his journal, of the principles by which it should be guided, the ends which it should seek to accomplish in all its multiform departments, in all these matters his judgment appears to have been the inspiration of unerring genius. This might * appear to be actually demonstrated by the magnificent result of his editorial life The New-York Tribune. It will not be claimed that he founded a journal which is in every respect, or in many respects, superior to others in this country and in Europe. There are several American journals, for example, which have been more profitable than The Tribune. There are several which, year in and year out, have not been behind it in the presentation of current news. There are some whose 484 LIFE OF HOKACE GKEELEY. "editorial page" shows equal ability and versatility: as much genius, as much sagacity, as much acumen. I think some of the strongest, most brilliant editorials which American jour nalism has produced have appeared in The Chicago Times newspaper. And it may be doubted whether Mr. Greeley was more successful, as a writer of editorials, than Charles Ham mond, long of The Cincinnati Gazette, or Dr. Charles H. Ray, for several years of The Chicago Tribune, afterwards of The Evening Post of the same city. Nevertheless, there has been no journal of preeminent gen eral ability, which has had the marked individuality of The New- York Tribune. There are thousands of persons who know of The Herald who never heard of Mr. Bennett. Every school boy, every grandmother of Christendom had learned much of Horace Greeley before he was a candidate for the chief office of his country. The Tribune had the most friends and the most valuable enemies of any journal in the world. They who stone the prophets, die, not the prophets. Other journals were devoted first of all to themselves; The Tribune to the welfare of the people. No other of our great journals has equalled it in Reform, nor approached it in the strength and the mighty heartiness with which it sympathized with struggling Human ity. The crumbling ruins of bad institutions, fallen in their warfare with right and justice, will be found to contain more and more destructive projectiles of The Tribune than were sent forth from any of the other great guns of journalism. "Here is a newspaper," said John Bright in the British House of Commons, exhibiting a copy of The New- York Tribune, " ad vocating great principles, arid conducted in all respects with the greatest propriety a newspaper in which he found not a syllable that he might not put on his table and allow his wife and daughter to read with satisfaction." The Tribune greatly aided to destroy more than one evil in English polity. The abuses it first assailed among our great journals in American law, and custom, and society, are very numerous. Excessive mileage, high postage, the franking abuse, slavery, unjust legal disabilities of men, unjust proscription of them, the rule of hatred, whence have come such heavy and persistent blows VITALITY OF GREAT JOURNALS. 485 against these and other wrongs and abuses as from The Tri bune ? And if the farmers of our country, our workingmen, our factory boys and girls are more enlightened than they were, and animated by more noble aims, where in journalism did they receive so much to teach and guide them as in the paper founded by Horace Greeley ? It has been the wisest exponent of the cause of Labour. There* has been no states man, there has been no party, so faithfully representative of The People, of their incorruptible integrity, of their virtue, ot their longing for improvement and for progress, as his newspaper. It was a beautiful pride of his, therefore, which caused him to desire to be chiefly remembered by posterity as the founder of The New- York Tribune. And he will be. This too, as one of the natural growths of his genius, joined, if I may so speak, with a law of journalism. In the teeming forests of South Africa, the stateliest tree, that which is greater in girth and towers high above all its com peers, is the mowana. This sublime pride of the forest has a vitality which is well nigh indestructible. Dr. Livingstone says of it: "No external injury, not even a fire, can destroy this tree from without; nor can any injury be done from within, as it is quite common to find it hollow. Nor does cut ting down exterminate it; for I saw instances in Angola in which it continued to grow in length after it was lying on the ground." A great journal seems to have the almost imperish able vitality of the mowana. For this we shall, doubtless, some day discover the reason. It may be because of the great ness of the journal. Even great animals live long. What ever may be the reason, there are facts plenty in support of my opinion. The death of James Gordon Bennett did not stop The Herald for an instant, nor change the great character which he had finally given it. And it would, no doubt, have been substantially the same if he had had no son. The Louis ville Courier-Journal had in Mr. George D. Prentice an editor of unique genius; but no one can safely urge that he was more brilliant, more witty, more genial than is Mr. Watterson, at 4:86 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. this time editor of that journal. The Chicago Tribune has stood the assaults of power, of money, of party, of devouring fire and flame, and gives* every evidence of living, with even increased influence, after many assailing powers and parties shall have followed their predecessors to the tomb. The Lon don Times is stronger than the British aristocracy; it will long outlive the British monarchy. Into The New- York Tribune Horace Greeley breathed the living soul of his benignant genius: a constant inspiration to his successor, the one of his own choice, who has already won new triumphs in behalf of popular enlightenment, of enterprising, independent journalism, animated by a generous philanthropy, showing that the journal still labours for the moral, social, political good of the people, pursuing and im proving the way of its illustrious founder. I need hardly add, I trust, that this is not said in compliment to him who succeeds the Great Editor, but in demonstration of the edito rial judgment of Horace Greeley, and of the inextinguishable vitality of independent journalism. CHAPTER XXVI. THE AUTHOR OF BOOKS. Mr. Greeley in Permanent Literature His Labours in Political Manuals Edits a Life of Henry Clay " Hints Towards Reforms " " Glances at Europe" "Overland Journey to California" "The American Conflict" A Work Upon Political Economy "Recollections of a Busy Life" "What I Know of Farming" Estimate of Mr. Greeley as an Author. LOT us now briefly consider the facts of Mr. Greeley s life which show his connection with the permanent literature of his country. I here mean, simply, his writings which have taken the form of books, as distinguished from his writings in journalism. That which now constitutes a considerable proportion of the matter of works of which Mr. Greeley was the author did, indeed, originally appear in The Tribune or in other journals. He also wrote a great deal for his own journal, for others, for magazines, addresses, lectures, letters, which might properly and profitably be collected into books that might fairly receive the favourable judgment of criticism and the considerate approval of the world of letters. But at this time we can, of course, only consider him as an author by the writings which he himself composed as books, or supervised in that form. We have seen that Mr. Greeley very early in life became noted as a political statistician. In his " Recollections of Horace Greeley," published in The Galaxy magazine for March, 1873, Mr. Thurlow Weed says that The New-Yorker Mr. Greeley s first journal was distinguished not only by its judi cious and interesting selections, but " remarkable for the extent and accuracy of its political statistics." It might appear that Mr. Greeley had a genius for political statistics. He was always at home with election returns, and probably there was not a year of his life, after he arrived at manhood, when he (487) 488 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. could not tell, on call, without reference to book or table, the exact vote of every State in the Union at the most recent elec tion, and of very many of the Congress Districts, and even of counties. He recollected not only on which side the different States and Districts had voted, but exactly how they had voted. He compiled The Whig Almanac, afterwards called The Tribune Almanac, long before he became generally known as a journalist, giving it a value in respect of accurate political intelligence and statistics before quite unknown. The work, afterwards mainly done by others, has grown into the most complete and valuable compendium of political facts and figures that we have. Akin to this was " A Political Text- Book for 1860," compiled by Mr. Greeley and Mr. John F. Cleveland. The design of the book was to present, in a com pact and convenient form, the more important facts, votes, resolves, letters, speeches, reports, and other documents, eluci dating the political contest of that year. It also contained many tables of election returns. I believe it was quite gener ally quoted as authority by speakers and writers of all parties during the campaign, best test of merit in a work of that character. But long before this Mr. Greeley had published a number of " Tracts on the Tariff," much of the substance of which was afterwards embraced in his work upon Political Economy. In 1852 he edited Sargent s Life of Henry Clay, adding little, however, to the author s narrative, besides an account of the proceedings of Congress on the occasion of Mr. Clay s death and funeral. His description of his own last interview with his most admired and -beloved statesman is worthy of insertion : " Learning from others how ill and feeble he was, I had not intended to call upon him, and remained two days under the same roof without asking permission to do so. Meantime, however, he was casually informed of my being in Washington, and sent me a request to call at his room. I did so, and enjoyed a half hour s free and friendly conversation with him, the saddest and the last! His state was even worse than I feared; he was already emaciated, a prey to a severe and distressing cough, and com plained of spells of difficult breathing. I think no physician could have judged him likely to live two months longer. Yet his mind was "GLANCES AT EUROPE." 489 unclouded and brilliant as ever, his aspirations for his country s welfare as ardent; and, though all personal ambition had long been banished, his interest in the events and impulses of the day was nowise diminished. He listened attentively to all I had to say of the repulsive aspects and revolting features of the Fugitive Slave Law and the necessary tendency of its operation to excite hostility and alienation on the part of our Northern people, unaccustomed to Slavery, and seeing it exemplified only in the brutal arrest and imprisonment of some humble and inoffensive negro whom they had learned to regard as a neighbour. I think I may without impropriety say that Mr. Clay regretted that more care had not been taken in its passage to divest this act of features needlessly repul sive to Northern sentiment, though he did not deem any change in its provisions now practicable." In the preface to the volume, " Hints Towards Reforms," Mr. Greeley intimates that it will probably be his first and last appearance as an author. I have already spoken of this work at some length in preceding pages. A number of extracts therefrom also appear in the Appendix to this volume. It will he found a valuable study to those who would have a thorough knowledge of the constant growth in power and versatility of Mr. Greeley s mind and the vast improvement he made in the art of composition. TO THE GENEROUS, THE HOPEFUL, THE LOVING, WHO FIRMLY AND JOYFULLY BELIEVING EN THE IMPARTIAL AND BOUNDLESS GOODNESS OF OUR FATHER, TRUST THAT THE ERRORS, THE CRIMES, AND THE MISERIES, WHICH HAVE LONG RENDERED EARTH A HELL, SHALL YET BE SWALLOWED UP AND FORGOT TEN, IN A FAR EXCEEDING AND UN MEASURED REIGN OF TRUTH, PURITY, AND BLISS, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR Such is the dedication of Horace Greeley s first book. Only a year afterwards, " Glances at Europe " was pub lished. There have been few books of travel more original, or 490 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. more interesting than this. I have added largely to the inter est of this volume by many extracts from it, in the chapter which treats of its author s first visit to Europe. One will there find very little of the upper-ten of Europe, but I know not where one will elsewhere procure in such small space more accurate pictures of the people or wiser suggestions for their good and their progress. Neither do I know of any other work of travels in Europe by an American author, wherein it is so plainly manifest that the traveller returns to his native land prouder of it, more earnestly devoted to it because of its better recognition of man as man. It is rare that Europe intensifies the republicanism of Americans. But Horace Gree- ley was so wholly one of the people that in Europe or else where he ever estimated " fuss and feathers " at their proper value. Mr. Greeley s next work was also a volume of travels his " Overland Journey to California in 1859." This, like Glances at Europe," consisted of letters originally con tributed to The Tribune. The " march of civilization," herein so greatly accelerated by his own influence, as well exerted through this volume as in other ways, has made much of the work appear already like a relic of antiquity. It is as such that it may be studied with profit and read with singular interest. The historian of America who shall write in 1959 will find in the volume which we are considering a richer mine of information than any its author discovered of gold in all his travels. Nevertheless, I beg respectfully to recommend to my great-great-great-grandchildren the reading of the " Over land Journey " in preference to the formal history of the early settlement of the Rocky Mountain region, as equally authentic and far more lively. The greatest work of Mr. Greeley as an author is his history of the war of the rebellion in the United States. It is entitled "The American Conflict: A History of the Great Kebellion in the United States of America, 1860- 65: Its Causes, Inci dents, and Results: Intended to Exhibit Especially its Moral and Political Phases, with the Drift and Progress of American Opinion respecting Human Slavery from 1776 to the Close of "THE AMERICAN CONFLICT." 491 the War for the Union." He has described with much detail the manner in which this work was composed : And now came the Presidential contest of 1860, closely followed by Secession and Civil War, whereof I had no thought of ever becoming the historian. In fact, not till that War was placed on its true basis of a struggle for liberation, and not conquest, by President Lincoln s suc cessive Proclamations of Freedom, would I have consented to write its history. Not till I had confronted the rebellion as a positive, desolating force, right here in New-York, at the doors of earnest Republicans, in the hunting down and killing of defenceless, fleeing Blacks, in the burning of the Coloured Orphan Asylum, and in the mobbing and firing of The Tribune office, could I have been moved to delineate its impulses, aims, progress, and impending catastrophe. A very few days after the national triumph at Gettysburg!!, with the kindred and almost simultaneous successes of General Grant in the cap ture of Vicksburgh, and General Banks in that of Port Hudson, with the consequent suppression of the (so called) " Riots " in this city, I was visited by two strangers, who introduced themselves as Messrs. Newton and O. D. Case, publishers, from Hartford, and solicited me to write the History of the Rebellion. I hesitated; for my labours and responsibilities were already most arduous and exacting, yet could not, to any considera ble extent, be transferred to others. The compensation offered would be liberal, in case the work should attain a very large sale, but otherwise quite moderate. I finally decided to undertake the task, knowing well that it involved severe, protracted effort on my part ; and I commenced upon it a few weeks later, after collecting such materials as were then accessible. I hired for my workshop a room on the third floor of the new Bible House, on Eighth street and Third and Fourth avenues, procured the requisite furniture, hired a secretary, brought thither my materials, and set to work. Hither I repaired, directly after breakfast each week day morning, and read and compared the various documents, official reports, newspaper letters, etc., etc., that served as materials for a chapter, while my secretary visited libraries at my direction, and searched out material among my documents and elsewhere. The great public libraries of New- York, Society, Historical, Astor, and Mercantile all cluster around the Bible House ; the two last named being within a bowshot. I occasionally visited either of them, in personal quest of material other wise inaccessible. When I had the substance of my next chapter pretty fairly in mind, I began to compose that chapter; having often several authorities conveniently disposed around me, with that on which I prin cipally relied lying open before me. I oftener wrote out my first draft, merely indicating extracts where such were to be quoted at some length ; leaving these to be inserted by my secretary when he came to transcribe my text; but I sometimes dictated to my secretary, who took short-hand notes of what I said, and wrote them out at his leisure. My first chapter was thus composed at one sitting, after some days had been given to the 492 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. arrangement of materials; but, usually, two days, or even three, were given to the composition of each of the longer chapters, after I had pre pared and digested its material. Our rule was to lock the door on resum ing composition, and decline all solicitations to open it till the day s allotted task had been finished ; and this was easy while my " den " was known to very few; but that knowledge was gradually diffused ; and more and more persons found excuses for dropping in; until I was at length subject to daily, and even more frequent, though seldom to protracted, interruptions. I think, however, that if I should ever again undertake such a labour, I would allow the location of my " den " to be known to but one person at The Tribune office, who should be privileged to knock at its door in cases of extreme urgency, and I would have that door open to no one beside but my secretary and myself. Even my proof-sheets should await me at The Tribune office, whither I always repaired, to com mence a day s work as Editor, after finishing one as Author at the " den." A chapter having been fairly written out or transcribed by my secretary, while I was " reading up " for another, I carefully revised and sent it to the stereotyper, who sent me his second and third proofs, which were successively corrected before the pages were ready to be cast. Sometimes, the discovery of new material compelled the revision and recast of a chapter which had been passed as complete. And, though the material was very copious, more so, I presume, than that from which the history of any former war was written, it was still exceedingly imperfect and contradictory. For instance : when I came to the pioneer Secession of South Carolina, I wished to study it in the proceedings and debates of her Legislature and Convention as reported in at least one of her own jour nals; and of these I found but a single file preserved in our city (at the Society Library), though four years had not yet expired since that Seces sion occurred. A year later, I probably could not have found one at all. Of the score or so of speeches made by Jefferson Davis, often from cars, while on his way from Mississippi to assume at Montgomery the Presi dency of the Confederacy, I found but two condensed reports ; and one of these, I apprehend, was apocryphal. In many cases, I found officers reported killed in battles whom I afterward found fighting in subsequent battles ; whence I conclude that they had not been killed so dead as they might have been. Some of the errors into which I was thus led by my authorities were not corrected till after my work was printed ; when the gentlemen thus conclusively disposed of began to write me, insisting that, though desperately wounded at the battle in question, they had decided not to give up the ghost, and so still remained in the land of embodied rather than that of disembodied souls. Their testimony was so direct and pointed that I was constrained to believe it, and to correct page after page accordingly. I presume a few, even yet, remain consigned to the shades in my book, who nevertheless, to this day, consume rations of beef and pork with most unspiritual regularity and self-satisfaction. There doubt less remain some other errors, though I have corrected many; and, as I have stated many more particulars than my rivals in the same field have "THE AMERICAN CONFLICT." usually done, it is probable that my work originally embodied more errors of fact or incident than almost any other. Yet "The American Conflict" will be consulted, at least by historians, and I shall be judged by it, after most of us now living shall have mingled with the dust, An eminent antagonist of my political views has pro nounced it " the fairest one-sided book ever written " ; but it is more than that. It is one of the clearest statements yet made of the long train of| causes which led irresistibly to the war for the Union, showing why that war was the natural and righteous consequence of the American people s general and guilty complicity in the crime of upholding and diffusing Human Slavery. I proffer it as my contribution toward a fuller and more vivid realization of the truth that God governs this world by moral laws as active, immutable, and all-pervading as can be operative in any other, and that every collusion or compromise with evil must surely invoke a prompt and signal retribution. The plan of this work was broadly comprehensive. The author designed to "begin at the beginning;" to trace the rebellion np to its first causes and down again to the final results of the war. " I believe," says he in his first preface which he calls " preliminary egotism," " I believe the thought ful reader of this volume can hardly fail to see that the great struggle in which we are engaged was the unavoidable result of antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heteroge neous institutions; that ours was indeed an irrepressible conflict, which might have been precipitated or postponed, but could by no means have been prevented; that the suc cessive compromises whereby it was so long put oiF, were, however intended, deplorable mistakes, detrimental to our national character; that we ought so early, at least, as 1819 to have definitively and conclusively established the right of the constitutional majority to shape our national policy according to their settled convictions, subject only to the Con stitution as legally expounded and applied. Had the majority then stood firm, they would have precluded the waste of thou sands of millions of treasure and rivers of generous blood." We accordingly find that the first of the two volumes of which the work is composed relates mainly to civil affairs, while the second is mainly military. The former is a historv / / f of the political and moral issues which agitated the American people from the time of their independence; of such political 494 IJFE OF HORACE GREELEY. and moral issues as, in the progress of their discussion became paramount; assumed the proportions of "an irrepressible con flict;" war. In a word, we have in this volume the history of the Slavery Question in this country from the year of the Declaration of Independence to the beginning of the rebellion. In the second volume, we have the history of the conflict of arms, happily interwoven with which is a history of the pro gress of those ideas in the country, in the National Congress, and in the Executive Department of the government, which culminated in Emancipation and at last, through Emancipation, in victory. Such, in briefest outline, was the general plan adopted by Mr. Greeley. He begins with saying: "No one can realize more vividly than I do, that the History through whose pages our great-grandchildren will contemplate the momentous struggle whereof this country has recently been and still is the arena, will not and cannot now be written; and that its author must give to the patient, careful, critical study of innumerable documents and letters, an amount of time and thought which I could not have commanded, unless I had been able to devote years, instead of months only, to the preparation of this vol ume. I know, at least, what history is, and how it must be made; I know how very far this work must fall short of the lofty ideal. If any of my numerous fellow-labourers in this field is deluded with the notion that he has written the history of our gigantic civil war, /, certainly, am free from like hallu cination." If we take this opinion to be correct as regards the history of the conflict of arms, we may well doubt its application to a very large share of "The American Conflict:" all those por tions, namely, which relate accounts of the causes leading to the war, and which in reality make a not unfaithful history of the most important political issue which has been as yet dis cussed by the thinkers, statesmen, and people of our republic. And to this great branch of his subject, Mr. Greeley did give many years of labour and reflection. We say that Daniel Webster s great speech in reply to Hayne, of South Carolina, was extemporaneous. He had but the briefest possible notes. "THE AMERICAN CONFLICT." 495 and these pertaining to the playful not the most celebrated parts of the speech. The compact, unanswerable argument, the majestic eloquence, the sublime outbursts of patriotism all came fresh from the glowing mind and soul. Nevertheless, Mr. Webster had studied that speech for twenty-five years. He had given the principal topics of which it treated long and intense reflection, great reading. Thus in a few hours he was able to utter arguments, ideas, sentiments, which his mind had been gathering for a quarter of a century. So it was also with those portions of Mr. Greeley s greatest literary work to which special reference is here had. They were composed with remarkable rapidity, which was made possible by more than thirty years study of the subjects under consideration. These long years of study placed the political portions of the History at his pen s end. We have seen, from Mr. Greeley s own account of the com position of this work, that, as to the accounts of military operations, the first edition contained many errors. To the correction of these he gave every attention, great solicitude indeed, making not a few expensive changes in the stereotype plates. Thus the work became scarcely less valuable in its military than its civil history. His plan of narrating military events was different from that generally adopted in history. Instead of giving accounts of simultaneous movements or campaigns, the narration of one constantly interrupting that of another, he followed a move ment or campaign to its close, before taking up the history of another. That he thus made the history of events clearer to general readers, and, upon the whole, presented a more complete daguerreotype of the war than might have been done upon the plan usually followed, there can be little doubt. These two immense volumes were composed in about two years, the author not pretermitting his duties upon The Tribune. Some one has said the difference between a man of genius and another is, that the genius can put many hundred poimds of steam on the square inch, without breaking things, and the other cannot. Horace Greeley s capacity in this respect seems to have been almost unlimited. 496 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. The dedication of "The American Conflict" is very beau tiful: TO JOHN" BEIQHT, BRITISH COMMONER AND CHRISTIAN STATESMAN: THE FRIEND OP MY COUNTRY, BECAUSE THE FRIEND OF MANKIND: THIS RECORD OF A NATION S STRUGGLE UP FROM DARKNESS AND BONDAGE TO LIGHT AND LIBERTY, 18 REGARDFULLY, GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. Horace Greeley became a "protectionist" very early in life, and under circumstances showing his remarkable independence of judgment. In 1866, he was elected President of the Ameri can Institute, thirty-five years after he had found his way to the hall of that association, to attend a Tariff Convention, he being then an unknown journeyman printer seeking work. Upon taking the chair, as President of the Institute, he gave an account of how he became a " protectionist," saying: " It is now more than thirty-four years since I, a minor and a stranger in this city, had my attention drawn to a notice in the journals that the friends of protection to American industry were to meet that day in con- vention at the rooms of the American Institute, said Institute being then much younger than, though not so obscure as, I was. I had no work, and could find none ; so, feeling a deep interest in and devotion to the cause which that convention was designed to promote, I attended its sittings; and this was my first introduction to the American Institute; which I have ever since esteemed and honoured, though the cares and labours of a busy, anxious life have not allowed me hitherto to devote to its meetings the time that I would gladly have given them. " I recur to the fact that I was drawn to the American Institute by my interest in and sympathy with the cause of protection to home industry. From early boyhood I had sat at the feet of Hezekiah Niles and Henry Clay and Walter Forward and Rollin C. Mallory. and other champions of this doctrine, and I had attained from a perusal of theirs and kindred writ ings and speeches a most undoubting conviction that the policy they commended was eminently calculated to impel our country swiftly and PROTECTION. 497 surely onwa-d through activity and prosperity to greatness and assured well-being. I had studied the question dispassionately, for the journals accessible to iny boyhood were mainly those of Boston, then almost if not quite unanimously hostile to protection ; but the arguments they corn- batted seemed to me far stronger than those they advanced, and I early became an earnest and ardent disciple of the school of Niles and Clay. I could not doubt that the policy they commended was that best calculated to lead a country of vast and undeveloped resources, like ours, up from rude poverty and dependence, to skilled efficiency, wealth, and power. And the convictions thus formed have been matured and strengthened by the observations and experience of subsequent years. Thus was I attracted to the rooms and the counsels of the American Institute." Of the policy of " protection," The Tribune has been an earnest and powerful advocate during the whole of its history. It is not too much to say, perhaps, that it has done more for that policy than all the public men who have advocated it combined. If there was one person entitled to be called the representative man of " protection " in our country, it was Horace Greeley. But much as he did for the cause in The Tribune in pam phlets, and public addresses, he was not content therewith, but wrote a book also upon the subject. In 1870, Messrs. Fields, Osgood, & Co., of Boston, published a duodecimo volume by Mr. Greeley, entitled: "Essays Designed to Elucidate the Sci ence of Political Economy, while Serving to Explain and defend the policy of Protection to Home Industry, as a Sys tem of National Cooperation for the Elevation of Labour. This work was designed to be a practical hand-book for gen eral readers rather than a scientific treatise. He expressly says in the preface: Writing for common people, I have aimed, above all things, to be lucid and simple. My illustrations are drawn from our National history, mainly from that part of it whereof there are many living witnessess ; and I have preferred those to whose truthfulness I could personally bear testimony. If these shall often seem to the fastidious, homely and commonplace, I do not believe that they will, on that account, be less acceptable to, or less effective with, the large number of my readers. " I write," he says again, " for the great mass of intelligent, observant, reflecting farmers and mechanics; and, if I succeed 32 498 LIFE OF HORACE GREELKY. in making my positions clearly understood, I do not fear that they will be condemned or rejected." The work was not only rapidly but hastily written. For this the author apologizes. " Had I been able," he states, " to snatch more time from the incessant labours and cares of a most exacting vocation, I should have presented a more com plete and unexceptionable work. I ought to have had at least one full year for the preparation of this volume; whereas, I hf.ve given it but a portion of my time for six months." I have deemed it but simple justice not only to Mr. Greeley as an author, but to the cause of "protection" to here state these facts. They suffice to show that the work is rather a heavy pamphlet than a carefully-meditated book. They also account for its somewhat excessive controversial spirit, and its want of philosophical generalization. Those who have high respect for Horace Greeley s genius, the candid of those who differ with him upon the subject of " protection," as well as those who agree, will regret that, instead of this hastily-prepared hand-book for general readers, he did not undertake to compose a philosophical treatise upon the subject of Political Economy. For, no matter that it be unfair toward him and toward the policy which he specially espouses in this book to compare it with other works upon the general subject, yet such is the inevitable result. Mr. Greeley comes to be compared, therefore, as an author, with many thinkers and writers of distinguished fame, whose genius, vast research, wisdom are universally confessed, and who have given very many more years to the composition of works upon Polit ical Economy than he gave months to the composition of his. If we take not into consideration the difference of circumstan ces, as here noted, such comparisons will be greatly unfavour able to Mr. Greeley. The work has a remarkable dedication: RECOLLECTIONS. " 499 TO THE MEMORY OP HENRY CLAY, THE GENIAL, GALLANT, HIGH-SOULED PATRIOT, ORATOR, AND STATESMAN; THE NOBLEST EMBODIMENT OP AMERICAN GENIUS, CHARACTER, AND ASPIRATIONS: THE MAN WHO MOST EFFECTIVELY COMMENDED THE POLICY OF PROTECTION TO THE UNDER STANDINGS AND HEARTS OF THE MASSES OF HIS COUNTRYMEN, THIS WORK OP ONE AMONG THE MANY WHO STILL LOVE, HONOUR, AND ADMIRE HIM, IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. But about a year before the appearance of Mr. Greeley s " Political Economy," his "Recollections of a Busy Life" had been published in a volume, thus appearing in the latter part of 1868. The chapters of which the work is composed had previously appeared in Mr. Robert Bonner s New-York Ledger literary journal. Mr. Bonner had meditated, nearly ten years before, the embalming of Mr. Greeley among the poets, to which he decidedly demurred in the following letter: NEW- YORK, February, 1859. MR. BONNER : I perceive by your Ledger that you purpose to publish a volume (or perhaps several volumes) made up of poems not contained in Mr. Dana s Household Book of Poetry, and I heartily wish success to your enterprise. There are genuine poems of moderate length which can not be found in that collection, excellent as it palpably is, and superior in value, as I deem it, to any predecessor or yet extant rival. There are, moreover, some genuine poets whose names do not figure in Mr. Dana s double index; and I thank you for undertaking to render them justice; only take care not to neutralize or nullify your chivalrous championship by burying them under a cartload of rhymed rubbish, such as my great namesake plausibly averred that neither gods nor men can abide, and you will have rendered literature a service and done justice to slighted merit. But, Mr. Bonner, be good enough you must to exclude me from your new poetic Pantheon. I have no business therein, no right and no desire to be installed there. I am no poet, never was (in expression), and never shall be. True, I wrote some verses in my callow days, as I presume most 500 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. persons who can make intelligible pen-marks have done ; but I was never a poet, even in the mists of deluding fancy. All my verses, I trust, would not fill one of your pa_ges ; they were mainly written under the spur of some local or personal incitement, which long ago passed away. Though in structure metrical, they were in essence prosaic; they were read by few, and those few have kindly forgotten them. Within the last ten years I have been accused of all possible and some impossible offences against good taste, good morals, and the common weal, I have been branded aristocrat, communist, infidel, hypocrite, demagogue, clisunionist, traitor, corruptionist, etc., etc., but I cannot remember that any one has flung in my face my youthful transgressions in the way of rhyme. Do not, then, accord to the malice of my many enemies this forgotten means of annoy ance. Let the dead rest! and let me enjoy the reputation which I covet and deserve, of knowing poetry from prose, which the ruthless resurrec tion of my verses would subvert, since the undiscerning majority would blindly infer that I considered them poetry. Let me up ! Thine, HOKACE GREELEY. Mr. Bonner, it seems, " let him up " for that time, but deter mined to put him to his mettle in prose. The " Recollections " came in good time. I have so frequently quoted from these Recollections, as they were afterwards collected and published in book form, that I need say but little of them here. The volume strikes me as being Mr. Greeley s most pleasing literary work. It seems that we iind here best reflected his noble character and his great genius; and this as well in what he writes as in what he passes over in silence, modestly leaving much to be said by others. I know of no autobiography which ought to be in the libraries and the minds of all the people so universally as the "Recollections of a Busy Life," by Horace Greeley. When the Recollections were published in a volume, Mr. Greeley added thereto, under the heading of "Miscellanies," certain essays and articles which had appeared in The Tribune, which he deemed might be considered of permanent interest. The first of these is an essay upon "Literature as a Vocation," which concludes with this magnificent paragraph: Let me conclude by restating the main propositions which pervade and vivify this essay. Literature is a noble calling, but only when the call obeyed by the aspirant issues from a world to be enlightened and blessed, not from a void stomach clamouring to be gratified and filled. Authorship is a royal priesthood ; but woe to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands LITERATURE. 50 1 on the ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the Race only that he may secure the confidence and sympathies of others, and use them for his own selfish ends ! If a man have no heroism in his soul, no animating purpose beyond living easily and faring sumptuously, I can imagine no greater mistake on his part than that of resorting to authorship as a vocation. That such a one may achieve what he regards as success, I do not deny ; but, if so, he does it at greater risk and by greater exertion than would have been required to win it in any other pursuit. No : it cannot be wise in a selfish, or sordid, or sensual man to devote himself to Literature; the fearful self-exposure incident to this way of life, the dire necessity which constrains the author to stamp his own essential portrait on every volume of his works, no matter how carefully he may fancy he has erased, or how artfully he may suppose he has concealed it, this should repel from the vestibule of the temple of Fame the foot of every profane or mocking worshiper. But if you are sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister, but a desire to serve and ennoble your Race, rather than to dazzle and be served by it; that you are ready joyfully to " shun delights, and live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of mankind may be promoted, then I pray you not to believe that the world is too wise to need further enlightenment, nor that it would be impossible for one so humble as yourself to say aught whereby error may be dispelled or good be diffused. Sell not your integrity; barter not your independence; beg of no man the privilege of earning a livelihood by Authorship; since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to corrupt it; but seeing through your own clear eyes, and uttering the impulses of your own honest heart, speak or write as truth and love shall dictate, asking no material recompense, but living by the labour of your hands, until recompense shall be voluntarily tendered to secure your service, and you may frankly accept it without a compromise of your integrity or a peril to your freedom. Soldier in the long warfare for Man s rescue from Darkness and Evil, choose not your place on the battle-field, but joyfully accept that assigned you; asking not whether there be higher or lower, but only whether it is here that you can most surely do your proper work, and meet your full share of the responsibility and the danger. Believe not that the Heroic Age is no more ; since to that age is only requisite the heroic purpose and the heroic soul. So long as ignorance and evil shall exist, so long there will be work for the devoted, and so long will there be room in the ranks of those who, defying obloquy, misapprehension, bigotry, and interested craft, struggle and dare for the redemption of the world. "Of making many books there is no end," though there is happily a speedy end of most books after they are made; but he who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at the impostures and vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed may close his eyes in death, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what he could for the emancipation and elevation of his kind. 502 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. Among these "Miscellanies" is a republication of the noted discussion between Mr. Greeley and Robert Dale Owen, on the subject of " Marriage and Divorce," the Editor of The Tribune taking high ground in favour of the indissolubility of mar riage, except for a single cause, his distinguished disputant contending for the wisdom, policy, and morality of the liberal statute of the State of Indiana upon this subject. Mr. Greeley found in Mr. Owen a keener and a broader mind than he had often coped with; and it would be difficult to decide whether the one or the other won the victory. Let it suffice here to say that Mr. Greeley s articles in the dispute were character ized not only by his usual intellectual strength and force of reasoning, but by a moral elevation of tone and religious fervour in the highest degree admirable. The last volume from the pen of Horace Greeley was, " What I Know of Farming," the preface of which was written Febru ary 3, 1871, the day on which he completed the sixtieth year of his life. Mr. Greeley was exceedingly happy in dedications, but he surpassed himself in the inimitable propriety and drollery of his dedication of this work: TO THE MAN OF OUR AGE, WHO SHALL MAKE THE FIRST PLOW PROPELLED BY STEAM, OB OTHER MECHANICAL POWER, WHEREBY NOT LESS THAN TEN ACRES PER DAY SHAL BE THOROUGHLY PULVERIZED TO A DEPTH OF TWO FEET, AT A COST OF NOT MORE THAN TWO DOLLARS PER ACRE, THIS WORK IS ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. The object of the work was to elevate the farmer s calling; to make it much more of a desirable and elevating pursuit than it was too often made by those engaged in it. In the preface to the work he says : We need to mingle more thought with our work. Some think till their heads ache intensely; others work till their backs are crooked to the LABOUR REFORM. 503 semblance of half an iron hoop ; but the workers and the thinkers are apt to be distinct classes ; whereas they should be the same. Admit that it has always been thus, it by no means follows that it always should or shall be. In an age when every labourer s son may be fairly educated if he will, there should be more fruit gathered from the tree of knowledge to justify the magnificent promise of its foliage and its bloom. I rejoice in the belief that the graduates of our common schools are better ditch- diggers when they can no otherwise employ themselves to better advantage, than though they knew not how to read ; but that is not enough. If the untaught peasantry of Russia or Hungary grow more wheat per acre than the comparatively educated farmers of the United States, our education is found wanting. That is a vicious and defective if not radically false mental training which leaves its subject no better qualified for any useful calling than though he were unlettered. But I forbear to pursue this ever-fruitful theme. I look back, on this day completing my sixtieth year, over a life, which must now be near its close, of constant effort to achieve ends whereof many seem in the long retrospect to have been transitory and unimportant, however they may have loomed upon my vision when in their immediate presence. One achievement only of our age and country the banishment of human chattelhood from our soil seems now to have been worth all the requisite efforts, the agony and bloody sweat, through which it was accomplished. But another reform, not so palpably demanded by justice and humanity, yet equally conducive to the well-being of our race, presses hard on its heels, and insists that we shall accord it instant and earnest consideration. It is the elevation of Labour from the plane of drudgery and servility to one of self-respect, self-guidance, and genuine independence, so as to render the human worker no mere cog in a vast, revolving wheel, whose motion he can neither modify nor arrest, but a partner in the enterprise which his toil is freely contributed to promote, a sharer in the outlay, the risk, the loss and gain, which it involves. This end can be attained through the training of the generation who are to succeed us to observe and reflect, to live for other and higher ends than those of present sensual gratification, and to feel that no achievement is beyond the reach of their wisely combined and ably self-directed efforts. To that part of the generation of farmers just coming upon the stage of responsible action, who have intelligently resolved that the future of American agriculture shall evince decided and continuous improvement on its past, this little book is respectfully commended. I have quoted this passage not only to show the general object Mr. Greeley had in view in writing the book, but also to exhibit the fact that he had lost no jot or tittle of his respect for Labour; that as he had commenced his public career with efforts in behalf of its elevation so he approached the close of his life manfully battling in the same good cause. I 504 LIFE OF HOKACE GREELEY. also desire to call special attention to the fact that Horace Greeley here expressed the opinion that Labour Reform is no less conducive to the welfare of our race than was the abolition of human slavery, and demands that we shall accord it instant and earnest consideration. Herein, it will not long hence be seen, I trust, he manifested both wisdom and prophecy. Already may we dimly perceive the approaching contest between corruption and honest government; between the usurped power of Corporationism and the just rights of the labouring masses. There is here that radical antagonism between systems which are right and claims which are wrong, upon the settlement of \vhich the happiness or misery of millions depends, in which are the elements of " an irrepres sible conflict." And it is through irrepressible conflicts, and through them alone, that the human race has thus far in its history made any progress toward perfect justice, general hap piness, and universal brotherhood. If Mr. Greeley was right, as I am confident he was, that in Labour Reform lay the most momentous issue of the time, let us bravely welcome the conflict, and pray Heaven to speed it! We need have no fear of the final result. Heaven has never yet been known to take the side of a close corporation in a fair fight with The People. But Heaven expects every man to do his duty, and allow no cheating. Mr. Greeley succeeded in making "What I know of Farm ing " a work of great practical value to farmers, and such as excited among many of them an earnest desire to elevate and dignify agriculture. The judgment of one successful farmer upon a work of this character is worth a volume of bookish criticism. I have heard many say they have read it with interest and profit. Among others, Mr. William J. Lewis, one of the most extensive and wealthy farmers of Connecticut, informed me that he purchased the work more out of curiosity than otherwise, but " I have to say," he continued, " that it gave me more valuable practical information, information of use to me on my farm, than I ever got from all the other books on agriculture I ever read." I quote from memory, but this is the substance of Mr. Lewis s remark. I recollect that MR. GREELEY AS AN AUTHOR 505 lie made special mention of the valuable lessons he had learned from Mr. Greeley upon the subject of fencing. From the foregoing account of the works written by Horace Greeley it is believed general readers may make a not inaccu rate estimate of him as an author. It is to be considered that the profession of journalism is so exacting, and so constant in its exactions, that it is not conducive to the literary habit. It does not, except in extraordinary minds, tend to intellectual growth. And this because it does not leave leisure for calm reflection. Wisdom comes not of much knowledge but of much thinking. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, saith the Scripture. Sufficient unto the day is the labour thereof, says the journalist. He is apt to remain about the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. The time will come, I trust soon, when journalists will not be so overworked as has been too generally the case since the great development of the modern public press. Up to this time, the demand for capable journalists has been greater than the supply. I mean here precisely what I say; neither less nor more. The conse quence is, of course, that capable journalists are required to write so much that they have little time for anything else; seldom enough for literary labour requiring persistent study and profound meditation. That our journalism does not suffer herefrom is evident from its recognized excellence. But what our journalism has gained, literature has, in a degree at least, lost. That Mr. Greeley founded a great and enduring journal, ever directing its management, ever performing more labour for it than any other person, and also succeeded as an author, is proof of most remarkable capacity of intellectual labour. His " Amer ican Conflict " will be, I think, an enduring monument to his fame. If there are passages in it of a too controversial nature rather in the editorial than in the historical style there are very many others of surpassing beauty and power; while the whole is an attestation of conscientious research, impartiality, and genius. His "Recollections of a Busy Life" is one of the best of autobiographies; crowded full of clear, beautiful 506 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEF. passages, with some of almost heavenly tenderness and many of sublime magnanimity. I confess that I have a great par tiality for "What I know of Farming." It is a home book for home people on their farms. It is fall of homely wisdom. It is one of the people speaking to the people, as one of them never before spake. It is not impossible that it may have a longer life than many volumes far more pretentious. Whilst, therefore, we may justly place a high estimate upon Mr. Greeley as an author, he will not occupy the preeminent position in the literature of his country that he attained in journalism. To authorship he gave a divided affection; his whole heart to The New- York Tribune. CHAPTEK XXVII. 1868 TO 1872. The Presidential Campaign of 1868 Nomination of General Grant by the Republicans and of Horatio Seymour by the Democrats Mr. Greeley Supports General Grant The Canvass Success of the Re publicans President Grant s First Cabinet He Secures the Wrath of Professional Politicians Mr. Greeley at First Sustains the Admin istration A Candidate for Congress Against S. S. Cox The "Revenue Reform" Movement The Formation of a New Party Undertaken The Ideas of Its Representative Men Mr. Greeley Not at First in the Movement. us now recur again to the life of Mr. Greeley as con nected with public affairs. The political question which most elicited discussion from the time of the close of the war up to the political campaign of 1868 was that of the Reconstruction of the South. There were other topics which at times largely engaged the public attention, as, for example, the remarkable contest between Congress and President Johnson, but they were connected with this absorbing issue, and, generally, grew out of it. It may be stated that Mr. Greeley s policy of recon struction was more comprehensive in its philanthropy than that of most of his long political co-labourers of the North. lie not only demanded the strongest guarantees for the com plete emancipation of the blacks, but the removal of all disabilities whatever, by which the whites of the South who had participated in the rebellion were affected. Horace Gree ley s policy contemplated that the republic should be wholly emancipated from all the ill effects of slavery and of the war. Upon no other basis, he thought, could there be a just, free, and enduring Union. "Universal amnesty; impartial suf frage," such was his terse expression constantly used in The Tribune. It is worthy of remark that though Mr. Greeley was by many (507) 508 LIFE OF HOEACE GREELEY. in the Republican party criticised, in respect of what they regarded as his too generous policy of reconstruction, yet did the party at length adopt his views, both by national platform and congressional legislation. It is also noteworthy that where this policy was adopted in Southern States, its practical opera tions were found to result in the prosperity and progress of those commonwealths; in the great and valuable victories of peace. The political campaign of 1868 was one of issues which rather looked back upon the past than forward to the future, or even round about upon the present. Though the war had been terminated three years before in the complete triumph of the Union cause, the political operations of the Presidential canvass were chiefly devoted to war. Many an orator "Wept o er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won." Many another stump hack made " that same old speech " which, during the exciting time of war, had aroused the patriot ism of innumerable country school-houses. If the forensic efforts, quite generally, of the Eepublican orators of 1S68 could be faithfully daguerreo typed for future generations, future gen erations would infer that the republic, in 1868, was in the midst of a desperate conflict of arms. Nor was this singular canvass, in thus recurring chiefly to the past, altogether unreasonable. It was but right that the recent triumph of arms should be allowed to have all its legitimate advantages, in politics as in other respects. The- extreme length to which this claim was pressed in many instances, however, would simply have changed the form of Southern slavery, not have removed the curse. We should have had the practical enslavement of the whites instead of the blacks. Against such mistaken and narrow policy Horace Greeley waged constant and earnest opposition, as well before as after the inauguration of the campaign resulting in General Grant s election. The National Convention of the Republicans for the year was held at the city of Chicago. The proceedings were not CANVASS OF 1868. 509 characterized by specially notable enthusiasm. The most note worthy event of the occasion, perhaps, was a speech by the Hon. John M. Palmer, candidate for Governor of the State of Illinois, in which he took high ground in favour of the pay ment of the national debt, and by cogent reasoning advocated the reduction of the burden of annual taxation. Mr. Palmer s views were incorporated into the platform. There was no candidate for the Presidency named, except General Grant, who, on motion of General John A. Logan, of Illinois, was unanimously nominated. Messrs. Schuyler Col- fax, of Indiana, Reuben E. Fen ton, of New York, Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, B. F. Wade, of Ohio, and Andrew G. Ourtin, of Pennsylvania, were the principal candidates for Vice-President. Mr. Colfax was nominated on the third bal lot, a fact which was largely due to the constant and efficient labours in that behalf of Mr. John D. Defrees of Indiana, powerfully seconded by the no less earnest work of ex-Senator Henry S. Lane. The Democratic Convention was held sub sequently in the city of New- York. After an animated contest, Horatio Seymour, of New York, received the nomination as candidate for President, General Francis P. Blair, of Missouri, that as Vice-President. The singularity of this canvass was, as has been said, that it was conducted, on the part of the Republicans, on the heroic plan, as though the nation were still at war, and by the Democrats on questions of finance which, as presented, the people were not able to understand. In fact, the New-York convention made two mistakes; committed two sins of omis sion, either of which was fatal to success. One of these was the defeat of Chief Justice Chase for the Presidential nomina tion; the other, the adoption of a platform failing unreservedly to recognize the utter defeat of Secession and to demand for the restored Union all the advantages justly belonging to its triumph. These omissions demonstrated that there was no new departure by the Democratic party, and left that organiza tion to fight it out on the wrong side, upon grave questions growing out of the recent war, which the people believed formed the paramount issues of the times. It was impossible 510 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. to make them think that the dying embers of Secession would be more quickly and completely quenched by ex-Governor Seymour than by General Grant. There were many able and earnest men in the Republican party who would have supported Mr. Chase as against General Grant, in any event; more who would have done so had the New-York platform also been such as, its doctrines enforced, would have produced thorough pacification through justice, financial integrity, and freedom for all. Mr. Greeley supported General Grant. The Tribune did not cease to advocate some of his views which had been over ruled by the Republican Convention. For example, he believed in high taxation, especially by tariffs, and a speedy payment of the national debt, whereas the Convention had adopted the policy of an immediate reduction of taxation and payment of the public debt in subsequent years, as the nation might become better able to pay it. Though differing with the Republican party upon this and some other questions, Mr. Greeley sup ported General Grant with all the influence of The Tribune. " Let us have peace," a happy expression used by the Repub lican nominee in his letter accepting the nomination was The Tribune s motto during the campaign. There could have been no doubt of the success of the Republicans from the time of the New-York Convention, with whose action many influential Democrats were greatly dis pleased. Mr. Seymour made a few public addresses during the campaign, which were fair manifestations of ability and states manship, but nothing could have redeemed his mistake of accepting the nomination. -The Republicans were greatly successful in the elections, General Grant having a large majority of both popular and electoral votes. President Grant entered upon the duties of his first political office with brilliant demonstration of inexperience. The Cabinet appointed by him was: Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, Secretary of State; A. T. Stewart, of New- York, Secre tary of the Treasury, A. E. Borie, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of the Navy; J. D. Cox, of Ohio, Secretary of the Interior; John A. J. Creswell, of Maryland, Postmaster General; E. R. PRESIDENT GRANT S FIRST CABINET. 511 Hoar, of Massachusetts, Attorney General. General Sherman for a time performed the duties of Secretary of War. It was at once discovered that Mr. Stewart, being a merchant, was prevented by law from serving as Secretary of the Treasury. Congress declining to repeal the law, Mr. George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, was appointed in his place. Mr. Borie was a preposterous Secretary of the Navy; and Judge Hoar, though an excellent man and able lawyer, was not possessed, in manner, of ways that are winning, or impressive. Mr. Washburne, a gentleman of large political experience, whoso long career as a Representative in Congress had been constantly and signally useful, remained at the head of the State Department only a short time. Mr. Hamilton Fish, of New York, succeeded, Mr. Washburne being appointed Minister to France. General John A. Rawlins, of Illinois, was then appointed Secretary of War a position which he filled, with the finest success, until relieved by death. He had been at the head of General Grant s staff during the war, and had performed the difficult, laborious, and responsible duties of the office to the great benefit both of his chief and of his country. He was an admirable Secretary of War: genial in manners, familiar with all the affairs of the army and the details of the department, prompt in decision, incorruptibly honest. In the distribution of the patronage of the executive office, President Grant speedily secured the wrath of professional politi cians quite generally. In many instances he wholly disregarded the recommendations of Senators and Representatives in Con gress, appointing men to office whom he personally knew or whose fitness was vouched for by friends, especially army friends. He had not been in the Executive Mansion a month until he was in what appeared to be serious collision with his party. He was ridiculed in private by the politicians without mercy. There are many men in office in 1873, who noisily if not earn estly supported President Grant in 1872, who pronounced him an absurd President in 1869. It is certain that in appointments he made some ridiculous blunders, and some that were worse than ridiculous. Never theless, he was very heartily sustained by the public at large 512 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. who thought that the rule of the politicians \vas being brought to a needed termination. Had President Grant continued to act independently of the politicians, it is likely his adminis tration would have been more successful, very much more useful. If he had corrected his own mistakes instead of per mitting himself to be revised by others, it would have been better for himself in history and for the country far more beneficial then and afterwards. Horace Greeley, though independently criticising the Presi dent in some particulars, sustained the administration upon the whole. He gave especial commendation to the policy by which the public debt was constantly reduced, and, generally, agreed that there was no cause of rupture between the President and the party which had elected him, an opinion which was less generally endorsed by representative men of the party than is commonly supposed. Mr. Borie may almost be said to have been laughed out of the Cabinet. He was succeeded by Mr. George II. Robeson, of New Jersey. Upon the death of Secretary Rawlins, General William W. Belknap, of Iowa, was placed in charge of the War Department. Upon the retirement of Mr. Cox, Mr. Columbus Delano, of Ohio, became Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Amos T. Akerman, of Georgia, succeeded Judge Hoar as Attorney General and was in turn succeeded by Mr. George II. Williams, of Oregon. With the Cabinet thus reconstructed, the President conducted the administration of his first term to a close. Meantime, the Republicans of New- York, being in a minor ity of voters, had some trouble to procure candidates for the State ticket in 1869. Mr. Greeley, after two or three persons had declined, accepted the nomination for State Controller. He was defeated, as were his associates on the ticket, but he ran ahead of all, with the exception of General Franz Sigel, who received a great many German votes. The fact is only noteworthy as showing that Mr. Greeley was more popular than his party. A similar fact was demonstrated in the fol lowing year, when Mr. Greeley was a candidate for Congress in the sixth district. His competitor in this canvass was the distinguished S. S. Cox, noted both as writer and politician. s. s. cox. 513 He had long represented the Capital district of Ohio, in Con gress, but having been beaten during the war by the Hon. Samuel Shellabarger, removed to the city of New- York. Mr. Cox is a man of genius. A sagacious politician, he is popular without seeking popularity, because he deserves to be. On account of character, ability, a long and brilliant public record showing few mistakes, judged from a partisan standpoint, it would have been difficult for the Democratic party to select a stronger candidate to run against Mr. Greeley ; one who would have received more votes. Nevertheless, the Democratic majority of 1868 was reduced from nearly three thousand to about one thousand. Mr. Greeley received several hundred more votes than the Republican candidate for Governor, Gen eral Woodford, a man of great popularity. The result was a demonstration of the high esteem in which Mr. Greeley was held; for on account of illness he was unable to make a single speech in the district. He was again shown to be stronger than his party. The war having been over some four years when President Grant was inaugurated, and genuine republicanism having also meantime been incorporated into the fundamental law, there were many who thought that much of the legislation of the war period demanded reform. The necessary expenses of the government, in providing the sinews of war, had been immense. The government had also been robbed of vast sums in the aggregate by the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots who infest every land in times of great commotion. By reason of necessary and unavoidable expenditures, therefore, enor mous taxation of the people was the price of national salvation. " What we obtain too cheap," said a great writer of our revo- lutiary era, "we esteem too lightly; tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." The price paid for the maintenance of the American Union, with freedom for all its inhabitants, was very high. Nor was it paid grudgingly nor unwillingly. There are few facts in his tory more creditable to any nationality than the sacrifices 33 514: LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. which the American people made that free institutions might be here vindicated. What the citizen-soldiery endured, as well as what they accomplished, is in no danger of being forgotten. What the citizens who did not become soldiers cheerfully con tributed to the support of the imperilled government gave evidence of scarcely less heroic treatment of the rebellion. The war concluded, the army of Volunteers disbanded, many men began to think that this heroic treatment in respect of taxation should be at once abandoned. There was, conse quently, something of a concerted movement in the interest of revenue reform. The war had called into existence a bureau of internal revenue, an establishment till then unknown, the expenditures of the government having been defrayed by duties upon imported goods. This new bureau levied an army of officers. Its operations were great, constant, and manifold. Nearly everything that one could eat, or wear, or drink, or in any way use, was liable to some taxation or other. All the multiform transactions under the Law of Merchants were taxed ; all the vast and varied operations of trade, commerce, speculation, were required to materially assist the government; all transfers of real estate were placed in the same category. These internal taxes were universal in application, and they were enormous in amount. But this was not all. Tariffs upon imported merchandise were from time to time increased by Congress until the limit of endurance on the part of even the most lofty patriotism may be said to have been reached. It might appear to be self- evident that, immediately upon the return of peace, there was urgent demand for reform 5f the revenue laws. War taxes may not be justly levied upon a people at peace. Accordingly, the formation of a new party was considered as a pressing demand of the times by some of the best minds of the country. The ideas of the representative men of the new movement were, briefly: That the Republican party had performed its mission, and, with the accomplishment of its great ideas, should pass into honourable history; that the Democratic party had degenerated into a fossil remain into which it was impossible to breathe a living soul; that the sys- SAMUEL BOWLES. The Springfield Republican. MUBAT HALSTEAr, The Cincinnati Commercial. "REVENUE REFORM." 515 tern of taxation, whether through the operation of internal revenue exactions or tariffs, ought to be at once reformed; that radical reforms in the civil service of the government were necessary for the conduct of the public business and the existence of political integrity. These enunciations and their logical corollaries formed a platform or series of dogmas upon which, it was believed, a new party, with reasonable pros pects of success, could be organized, and ought to be. Several influential journals sympathized with the movement. The New-York Evening Post was among them ; and a proposed reform receiving the advocacy of a journal of which William Cullen Bryant was editor, at once became entitled to respect. The Chicago Tribune, The CincLnnatti Commercial, The Springfield Republican, The St. Louis Republican among great daily journals gave encouragement to the contemplated organi zation, whilst the ablest weekly newspaper of the times, The Nation, bade it hospitable welcome. Many able men in public life declared that there was necessity for reforms, and doubted their success except with the success of a new party. One must needs speak of things which have so recently been the subject of political conflict with the fear of correction and the certainty of dispute before his mind. The truth seems to be that those who especially championed the movement for a new party undertook its formation through the advocacy of doctrines pertaining to details rather than on general princi ples involving the progress of the people. Their chief efforts were made against high tariff, but their arguments went rather to the policy of this mode of indirect taxation than to the advocacy of free trade as a right of the people. " Protec tion of American Industry," the juggling phrase wherewith Henry Clay had described the policy of high tariffs upon imported goods coming into competition with those of domes tic manufacture, as though the right of manufactures to trade were greater and more important than the right of the people to competition in trade, " Protection," I say, was not assailed by the reformers as essentially vicious in principle, subversive of natural right, and, therefore, unrepublican. If the proposed reform only goes to a detail, asked those adhering to existing 516 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. political organizations, why not bring it about in the parties in being? Great reforms, they insisted, must be based upon great truths. Hampden did not inaugurate the English Bevo- lution because of an exorbitant tax, but because the tax was unjust. He did not war against the payment of pounds, shil lings, and pence, but against an act subverting popular right. It was in vain that the reformers assailed enormous taxes and high tariffs simply because they were enormous and high. The ready reply was: "Very well; how are we to pay the immense amount that the war has charged up against us with out high taxes? So long as the government needs, honestly needs, vast sums of money annually, we must cheerfully sub mit to burdensome exactions. If there is peculation in the party in power, and peculators always find their way into the party in power, punish, disgrace them; but the fact that taxes are high is no sufficient basis for the formation of a new party. On the contrary, the fact of high taxes, they being necessary in support of government and payment of debts, is creditable to the party in power, because showing its courage to do right against unreasonable clamour." There was no answer to this statement of the case on the plan of ratiocination adopted by the reformers generally. The true answer to it was, that the taxes were not only high, but many of them were levied upon a principle in antagonism with freedom, subversive of just government. Such is the plan of high tariffs w r ith the object of curtailing the people s right to competition in trade. No tax, in support of the government, the government being justly and honestly conducted, is wrong ful, if levied according to the forms of law. To compel the people by force of law to support establishments which have no possible governmental attributes: neither legislative, execu tive, nor judicial: is of the essence of despotic power. So far as it goes, it is wholly destructive of free government. It may be better than free government, if you please to think so. It may be corporationism, or companyism, or combinationism, or paternal government; but it is not free government. It is anything else but that. If the reformers did not go to the root of the matter, it is to "REVENUE REFORM." 517 be observed that there was some excuse for the postponement oi the argument upon radical principles. It would have been unwise suddenly to repeal much of the extraordinary legisla tion enacted during the war, and which had been so long in existence that the affairs of the people had got to moving in channels which it were not well abruptly to change. The gross expensiveness to the people of the system condemned, and many accompanying practical ills, shown by the reformers, were sufficient to justify gradual change. By and by these facts could be used as arguments against the unjust system. It might logically be claimed that such gross expensiveness and so many practical ills must of necessity have their source in injustice and wrong. Though it is true the reformers did not generally take the high ground of argumentation here referred to against what Mr. Clay, with sublime irony, had called " Protection of American Industry," some of our thinkers did so. Among these, though he did not join the new party when it came to be formally organized, was Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, the celebrated abolitionist. Mr. William Cullen Bryant had long been emi nent among this school of thinkers. Among public men Mr. Carl Schurz was the ablest and clearest expounder of reform ideas, but Mr. B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, was little behind him. Mr. David A. Wells, by many reports, essays, and arti cles, demonstrated the expensive operations of the vicious system. The Nation newspaper was a dignified and powerful advocate of reform, and, indeed, afterwards declined to support Mr. Greeley for President because of his well known views upon the tariff question. Mr. Manton Marble, the real founder of the New- York World newspaper; he who organized success for it; contributed many articles to his journal upon tbe sub ject, which Mr. Greeley nor any one else was able to answer. Colonel Grosvenor, long of The St. Louis Democrat, published a valuable volume upon Political Economy about the time of which we are treating. Not a few gentlemen of eminent abil ity delivered public lectures and addresses in behalf of revenue reform. Other reforms to which we have briefly referred were advo- 518 LIFE OF nOKACE GREELEY. cated by those who proposed to form a new party. In this movement, Mr. Greeley at first took no part. Indeed, one of the leading ideas of its representative men was indirect antag onism to the teachings of his whole life. He had written more, spoken more, in behalf of " Protection " than any of his countrymen. He was the representative man, par excellence, in the United States, of the doctrine of " Protection." He had not only written more in advocacy of that doctrine than any American, but more also in attack of the opposing principle and of its eminent defenders. Some of his editorial assaults in connection with this subject upon Mr. Bryant, Mr. Wells, and other advocates of reform, were couched in such terms as must be forever lamented by all who believe that strength of argu ment is never weakened by dignified, even chivalric treatment of opponents who have been guilty of no unfairness. It was natural, therefore, that Mr. Greeley should be opposed to the " revenue-reformers," as they were called, and the for mation of a new party, with whose most distinguished repre sentative men and journals, free trade was a cardinal doctrine. It was not until afterwards, when other questions of great and immediate importance had arisen for settlement, and he had with his own eyes seen the ills by which the South was being, as he thought, plucked, plundered, and impoverished, that he was persuaded of the necessity of the defeat of the Republican party, and the speedy inauguration of many vital reforms which could be safely entrusted only to a new organization, fresh from the people, and therefore quite sure to be brave honest, faithful, and capable. CHAPTEK XXVIII. A TOUR OF THE SOUTH. Mr. Greeley Visits Texas An Account of His Southern Tour He Emphatically Assails "The Carpet-Baggers" as a Class The Effect of the Tour Upon His Political Opinions. EARLY in the Summer of 1871, Mr. Greeley visited Texas, for the purpose of delivering an agricultural address at the city of Houston. It is not possible that he would have made a journey of fifteen hundred miles for this purpose alone. He desired to see, with his own eyes, the actual situation of South ern politics, of Southern society, and to study the practical operations of existing laws and customs. He was everywhere received with great hospitality and eclat. His presence at Houston brought thither a vast number of people, among them thousands who had for many years regarded him as the arch-enemy of the South among all the people of the North, but who had been led to reconsider their harsh judgments, chiefly on account of his early and persistent demand of universal amnesty for all political oifenses. It soon appeared from Mr. Greeley s utterances, both oral and through The Tribune, that he was most unfavourably impressed with the government of the South by "carpet baggers," as those had come to be generally called who had recently migrated to the South from Northern States, and adopted politics as their trade. The war had devastated large portions of the South; had ruined great numbers of men who had always been accustomed to opulence and ease. Emancipa tion had made new systems of agriculture, and of labour gen erally, not only desirable but necessary. The political power gained by the blacks, lately slaves, tended to place the old politicians in retirement. It is, indeed, self-evident that there could not have been so great a disturbance, so radical a revolu- (519) 520 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. tion, without bringing about a state of things the wise and safe control of which would demand the best efforts of states manship. Millions of persons suddenly dispossessed of poli tical power long exercised; millions suddenly possessed of power to which they had never been accustomed, no land ever passed through such a revolution without finding many difficult questions to be settled, many practical dangers to be avoided, many conflicts constantly arising. "We may now clearly see, though we may not all have been able to see it at the close of the war, and some may even not be able to perceive the truth before the close of the current century, that for the practical rehabilitation of the South two things were specially demanded. These were: universal am nesty for political offenses, and immigration. Most unfortu nately only one of these demands of true statesmanship and political economy was supplied. Immigration, though so highly desirable by the South, failed to solve the Southern problem, which, aided by amnesty, it might have solved, and probably would have done. It is always unwise to have an element of discontent in political society. The poorest possible use to which men can be put is to make martyrs of them. This is precisely what was done with thousands of men in every Southern State who were familiar with affairs, with the habits and customs of the people, and with the laws. There were thousands of such men in every one of those commonwealths who, the war over, " accepted the situation " with all candour and honesty. By their experience and knowledge they were better fitted for the conduct of public affairs than, the emancipated blacks. For the same duty strangers in the land could not compare with them. It were barely possible that these would undertake to more certainly insure the new rights of the blacks, better to provide for their education, etc.; but for the general good, men who are native and to the manor born can better legislate than strangers. I know of no one argument which is more conclusive of Horace Greeley s remarkable foresight and statesmanship than is to be found in the ills of that system of government which " CAKPET-BAGGERS." 521 will be perfectly understood by the word " earpet-bagism." After the war there was a considerable immigration to the South. The immigrants largely engaged in politics. They became possessed of political power. A noted public man called them " carpet-baggers," and the word has become fixed in our political nomenclature. Southern citizens being deprived of political privileges, to great extent, the blacks being unfitted quite generally for public position, adventurers from the North suddenly came in possession of the political power of most of the Southern States. And with the most lamentable result. If earpet-bagism has yet been responsible for a single Senator of the United States or Representative in Congress of respect- ble abilities or character I do not now think of his name. But its great evils were manifested in the local governments, State and municipal, and by officers of the United States of this kind sent South by the President, the Senate consenting. A history of this earpet-bagism is a record of shameful pecula tions, of daring frauds, of shameless robberies of common wealths. Not the Norman conquerors after the battle of Hast ings, not Pizarro and his lieutenants in Peru, paid less heed to the rights of the peoples they plundered and ruined than our American Knights of the carpet-bag. The process must have been all the more unpleasant to the South because unredeemed by a single gleam of chivalry, or even by a single deed of ferocious courage. Neither the Saxons nor the poor Peruvians were ever so humiliated as this. When Mr. G-reeley visited the South, the ills of government by irresponsible strangers had become manifest not only in the retardation of the physical development of the country, but by an unhappy, a dangerous condition of public sentiment. No argument against slavery could be stronger than the fact that the late slaves generally took sides with the carpet baggers against their late masters. It makes no difference that they were imposed upon by the adventurers. This only shows that slavery had given them a dangerous capacity of being imposed upon. But this is not all. They went with the carpet baggers because the carpet-baggers had never enslaved them. Their unhappiness in slavery, their real discontent, notwith- 522 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. standing all that has been said and sung to the contrary, must be taken as demonstrated by the fact that they preferred to their late owners as friends, allies, and coadjutors, a horde of as graceless, vulgar adventurers as ever infested any land. All these evils of carpet-bagism, the resultant ills of slavery, the misfortunes that had sprung from the want of amnesty, Mr. Greeley studied carefully and candidly. His conclusion was such as to cause him emphatically to assail the carpet baggers as the chief obstacle in the way of Southern pacifica tion, happiness, and prosperity. He did not deny that there were thousands of men in the South, recently from the North, who were valuable citizens. These were generally engaged in agriculture, trade, manufacture, taking no prominent part in politics. But those who had become politicians were, as a class, justly censurable, as he thought; and, so thinking, he expressed his opinions with characteristic force and honesty. He addressed the public at several places in Texas, in Mississippi, and in other Southern States, on most occasions speaking upon topics relating to the practical development of the material resources of the South, rather than in discussion of political doctrines. At some places he advised Southerners to raise "more corn and less cotton;" and almost everywhere he earnestly advocated the establishment of domestic manu factures. In every instance he spoke strongly and eloquently in behalf of the duty and the necessity of the return of thorough harmony and good feeling between the people of the two sec tions lately at war. Upon his return to New- York, he was invited to address the Lincoln Club, and did so on the evening of June 12th. This speech is of value, both biographical and political. I therefore quote largely from it. Mr. Greeley began by saying that he had been invited to deliver an agricultural address at Houston, Texas, but had peremptorily declined. Being earnestly pressed by many prominent business men of New- York to reconsider his determination, they insisting that he might by a tour of the South render the country a real service, he was persuaded to do so. With this explanation he proceeded to speak of the late war, saying that he had everywhere argued that from IN TRY AS. 523 beginning to end the national government had occupied the defensive position. Having dwelt at some length upon this point, he proceeded: Now, then, I went to Texas to deliver an agricultural address at Houston, and I delivered it. That was my work and it was done- But on my way down a club of Union soldiers now living in New Orleans, pressed me to make a speech to them in their club-room, and I did so. I attempted in that speech, to vindicate the right of this nation, this republic, to that vast territory purchased by her money, and defended by the blood of her sons; organized into States by her Congress, and so made an integral portion of this American Republic. I argued that the southern part of the Mississippi valley could not possibly wish to be separated from the northern part by two menacing lines of frowning fortresses and hostile Custom Houses. I urged, as I always have believed, that never did the people living on the Lower Mississippi, in their sober senses, seek to be divorced and alien ated from the people of the Upper Mississippi; and I affirmed the right of the American people to navigate the great river from the Rocky Moun tains to the Gulf, unembarrassed and unimpeded by any boom across its channel or by any gunboats stationed there to cause vessels to heave-to for Custom House scrutiny and examination. So I talked because I so believed. Then, again, visiting the little city of Columbus, Texas, the only place I did visit on the western side of the Colorado river, I was, about this time of night, while sitting in my hotel, waited upon by a German depu tation, who asked me to come over to their club-room and talk to them a little while, they being all loyal Union men. Well, I went over. Thej - had an hastily assembled crowd, and I spoke for half an hour, perhaps, in vindication and explanation of the late great struggle for unity in this country and for unity in Germany; for the defense and protection of these two great nations in their rights of territory and nationality. I argued, as well as I could, that though some men honestly believe that our struggle and the triumph therein of the national cause will tend to despot ism on this contiuent, and that some so hold with regard to the German triumph in their great struggle, I on the contrary, believe that the ultimate tendency and result of these two great consummations will be the promo tion and advancement of liberal ideas and institutions alike in the Old World and the New. Well, gentlemen, as I was leaving Texas, a pressing invitation was given me by the Republicans of Galveston to make a speech to them on the last night I spent in their State, and I acceded to their request. I tried before them to vindicate the North against the charges made against her in the South, and to prove that the North did not make war on the South (as too many Southern people still believe she did). I tried to show them that the war was commenced in the South, by the South, nay, in Texas itself, by capturing, through treachery, the United States army and turning its arms and munitions against the flag and against the integrity of our country ; and 52-i IJPE OF 1IOKACE GREELEY. that, all the way through, we stood virtually on the defensive against what seemed to me a most indefensible and wanton aggression. I said what I could to vindicate the North from the reproach of malignity of wishing to oppress, or plunder, or cripple the South, and tried to make my South ern countrymen believe that we were all Americans, and altogether inter ested and striving for the prosperity and the growth of our whole widely- extended country. [Applause.] Such was my theme at Galveston. Well, gentlemen, I have heard it objected that, in my speech at New , Orleans I asserted that if there had been universal amnesty four years ago, there would have been no Ku-Klux in 1871. I do not think I said exactly that; but I did say that I regarded the policy of excluding from office the leading men of the South as a very great mistake, and a very great injury to the national cause and to the Republican party. I said no more than General Sickles had said in substance four years earlier, when he was Military Governor of South Carolina, and declared that he was crippled and enfeebled in his efforts to govern that State well \>y the fact that her best men, her most considerate and conservative men, were not available to him as magistrates, because of an exclusion whereof Andrew Johnson was the author. He said : " I cannot govern South Carolina as well as I could if I were able to choose the best men to help me instead of the second-best." I am entirely of that conviction. I believe it was a mistake, when you allowed a million of Confederates to vote for members of Congress, to deny them the right to vote for just such men as they pre ferred. I believe, therefore, the best men would be safer and more useful in Congress than their second-rate men ; better for us and better for their country. [Applause.] So I argued because I so believed ; and still I say that if the men were allowed to represent the South who express the sentiment of the South if the Toombses, Wises, and Wade Hamptons had been allowed to go to Congress, and had been sent there four years ago, the Republican party would have been a great deal stronger, and recon struction very much further advanced and more certain than it is to-day. ********* But I have been asked, "Are there any Ku-Klux down South?" Yes, gentlemen, there are. They didn t come up to me and tell me they were Ku-Klux very often. [Laughter.] They didn t undertake to perform their delicate operations on me. I should have had very much more respect for them if they had. * * * I hold our government bound by its duty of protecting our citizens in their fundamental rights, to pass and enforce laws for the extirpation of the execrable Ku-Klux conspiracy ; and if it has not power to do it, then I say our government is no government, but a sham. I, therefore, on every proper occasion, advocated and justified the Ku-Klux act. I hold it especially desirable for the South ; and, if it does not prove strong enough to effect its purpose, I hope it will be made stronger and stronger. * * * Fellow-citizens, the Ku-Klux are no myth, although they shroud themselves in darkness. They are no flitting ghosts; they are a baneful reality. They have paralyzed the right of suffrage in many counties throughout the South, and carried States that " THE THIEVING CARPET-BAGGERS." 525 they ought not to have carried. But they are not the only enemies to republican ascendancy in the South. There is another influence equally injurious with theirs, and a great deal more detrimental to the fame and character of the Republican party. I allude to what are known as the " thieving carpet-baggers." [Applause.] Fellow-citizens, do not mistake me. All the Northern men in the South are not thieves. The larger part of them are honest men, some of whom stay there at the peril of their lives because they believe it to be their duty. Next to the noble and true women who have gone down South to teach black children how to read, nobler there are not on the earth than these, whom a stupid, malignant, dilapidated aristocracy often sees fit to crowd into negro hovels to live, not allowing them to enter into any white society because they are teaching negro children next to these, who rank as the noblest women in the South, are the honest and worthy Northern men who, in the face of social proscription and general obloquy and scorn, stand firmly by the Republican cause. The public is often heedlessly unjust. Let a government have 10,000 official subordinates in power, of whom 9,900 are honest and true men, who do their duty faithfully, while hardly 100 are robbers and swindlers, the public will hear a great deal more about the 100 robbers than about the 9,900 true men. The 100 stand out in the public eye; they are always doing something which exposes them to the scornful gaze of the multi tude, while the honest and true men pass along, silent and unobserved, and nothing is said, very little is thought of them. All attention is con centrated upon the 100 who are defaulting and stealing and forging, and running away. Well, gentlemen, "the thieving carpet-baggers" are a mournful fact; they do exist there, and I have seen them. [Laughter.] They are fellows who crawled down South in the track of our armies, generally a very safe distance in the rear, some of them on sutlers wagons ; some of them bear ing cotton permits; some of them looking sharply to see what might turn up; and they remain there. They at once ingratiated themselves with the blacks simple, credulous, ignorant men, very glad to welcome and follow any whites who professed to be the champions of their rights. Some of these got elected Senators, others Representatives, some Sheriffs, some Judges, and so on. And there they stand right in the public eye, stealing and plundering, many of them with both arms around negroes and their hands in their rear pockets seeing if they cannot pick a paltry dollar out of them. And the public looks at them; does not regard the honest Northern man, but calls every "carpet-bagger" a thief, which is not the truth by a good deal. But these fellows many of them long-faced and with eyes rolled up are greatly concerned for the education of the blacks and for the salvation of their souls. [Great laughter.] " Let us pray," they say. But they spell pray with an e, and, thus spelled, they obey the apostolic injunction to "pray without ceasing." Fellow-citizens, the time has been and still is when it was perilous to be known as a Republican or an Abolitionist in the South, but it never called 52 G LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. the blush of shame to any man s cheek to be so called until these thieving carpet-baggers went there; never. [Applause.] They got into the Legis latures. They went to issuing State bonds. They pretended to use them in aid of railroads and other improvements. But the improvements were not made, and the bonds stuck in the issuers pockets. [Laughter.] That is the pity of it. " Well," some say, "you have such thieves at the North." Yes, we do, too many of them [applause], but the South was already impoverished, was bankrupt, without money, without thrift, almost without food, and these fellows went there robbing and swindling when there was very little to steal and taking the last ten-cent shinplaster off the dead men s eyes. They were recognized by the late aristocracy not merely as thieves but as enemies. Says Byron s Greek minstrel "A tyrant but our masters then, Were still at least our countrymen." Thus we record the men who annually rob us at Albany, at Trenton, and at Harrisburgh. They do not carry their plunder out of the State when they get any. These fellows do ! The South was not merely defeated in the late contest; she was profoundly astonished by the result. Her people have not fairly got over their amazement at their defeat, and what they see of us are these thieves who represent the North to their jaundiced vision and, representing it, they disgrace it. They are the greatest obsta cles to the triumph and permanent ascendancy of Republican principles at the South, and as such I denounce them. [Applause.] ********** But, gentlemen, my voice fails, yet I want to say a few words about the New Departure. [Laughter.] When men are in a bad fix I reckon they had better depart from it, and I fully justify those Democrats who have determined to depart from the foolish old business of running their heads against a stone wall. If I were these I should depart, and I think it well for them to do it ; and since they do it I am not inclined to criticise the manner too severely nor to judge them too harshly. I have made a rule for some time never to conjure up a bad motive for a good action. They are where they ought not to be : they propose to depart, and I think the} should. Our Ohio friends do not take quite so charitable a view of the new departure as I do. They say there was a particularly rough character once who was noted for violating the Sabbath among other bad deeds. But finally he became converted " got religion," and joined the church. All right. One day a gentleman came along and asked a neighbour of his,. "Do you see any great change in Nokes, since he joined the church?" " O, yes, he used to go out chopping Sunday mornings with his axe swung over his shoulder ; now he carries it under his coat." [Laughter.] Gentlemen, I am veiy glad that the Democratic party has taken off its shoulder the axe which it has wielded so many years in deadly hostility to the rights of the coloured race. I am glad it has put it under its coat,, but I hope it will think better of it and put it back into the wood-house- THE NEW DEPARTURE. 527 and meet the blacks with open hands saying, " we arc going to treat each of you just as you shall deserve to be treated, no matter what is the colour of your skin." I do believe they mean this the most of them. I believe they mean hereafter to wear their Democracy something more than skin deep. At any rate I shall urge and encourage them to do so. Fellow-citizens, I would not make too much of the New Departure. I do not understand these gentlemen even to profess any penitence for their past warfare against the equal rights of men. I don t understand them even to promise that they will never renew their warfare. I only under stand them as pledged to this extent : They admit that the three Republican amendments to the Federal Constitution are now a part of that Constitu tion and while they are there they must be obeyed. That I understand to be the extent of the New Departure and I deem it worth a good deal. So long as they admit that these amendments are in, I shall feel pretty sure that they are not likely to get them out. I shall rest content that the rights of all men, being citizens of the United States, are safe under the guaran tees of the Federal Constitution. Twenty-five years ago I stood at the polls of the Nineteenth ward of this city, all one rainy, chilly November day, peddling ballots for equal suffrage. I got many Whigs to take them, but not one Democrat. Again, in 1860 not eleven years ago I again stood at my polls all day, and handed out the same kind of vote, and I do not remember that a single Democrat took one. Some Republicans, even, would not take them, but no Dem ocrat would. I believe in human progress. I believe that men are rather wiser and better to-day than they were twelve years ago; and here is proof of it. It is not two years since our first Democratic State Legislature withdrew the consent given by its Republican predecessors to the Fifteenth Amendment, and by a party vote so far as New York could do it they tried to defeat that amendment. Now we have a New Departure. Was it not high time ? I think it was. Fellow-citizens, I am weary, weary of this sterile strife concerning the fundamental principles of republican institutions. I am tired of trying to teach the Democrats the A B C s of democracy. I rejoice to know that they have taken a New Departure, and I tell you that when they have once taken it, it will be a great deal harder to get back on to the old ground than to go on. Some one says, "Isn t it going to put the Republi cans out of power?" I cannot tell. Immediately, I think not, An English statesman well says: "Confidence is a plant of slow growth;" and I think it will take some time for the people to realize that they mean this some time for their own folks to realize it a great deal longer to make any black man believe that they mean it. I don t anticipate any sudden change in the relative position of parties" because of the New Departure. Ultimately, I think it will strengthen the Democrats. "Then," one says, "you will go out of power." Yes, we shall, some time, no doubt. If it be my fate to go out this moment, and every year of my life thereafter to be in the minority, powerless and 528 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. defeated, I should still thank God most humbly and heartily, that He allowed me to live in an age and to be a part of the generation that wit nessed the downfall and destruction of American Slavery. [Prolonged applause.] Fellow-citizens, I trust the day is not distant wherein, putting behind us the things that concern the past, we shall remember that grand old injunction of the Bible: "Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward." I am weary of fighting over the issues that ought to be dead, that legally were dead years ago. When slavery died I thought that we ought speedily to have ended all that grew out of it, by universal ainnesty^ and impartial suffrage. [Applause.] I think so still ; and, if the Demo cratic party concede Impartial Suffrage, the Republican party will concede universal amnesty; if not, it will have but a very short lease of power. So, then, friends, I summon you all, Republicans and Democrats, to prepare for the new issues, and new struggles that visibly open before us. In the times not far distant we shall consider questions mainly of industrial policy questions of national advancement questions involving the best means whereby our different parties may through cooperation, or through rivalry, endeavour to promote the prosperity, the happiness, and the true glory of the American people. To that contest I invite you. For that contest I would prepare you. And so, trusting that the blood shed in the past will be a sufficient atonement for the sins of the past ; and that we are entering on a New Departure, not for one party, but for the whole country a departure from strife to harmony, from destruction to construc tion, from desolation to peace and plenty, I bid you, friends and fellow citizens, an affectionate good-night. [Prolonged cheers and applause.] It is apparent from these utterances that Mr. Greeley s Southern tour had had a marked effect upon his political opinions. He had acquired no new faith in the Democratic party; he had lost confidence in the .Republican organization; he had begun to see in the "new party movement " a New Departure of men of all parties in the interest of harmony, peace, happiness for the whole country. He was assailed in many quarters for his views upon the carpet-baggers, but this only caused him to reiterate them with still greater emphasis and to adduce new facts showing their baneful influence upon the South, and, by necessary conse quence, upon the whole nation. Believing that the practical exclusion of the best men of the South from public affairs was wrong, unjust, anti-republican in principle; perceiving that the rule of the carpet-baggers was ruinous, impoverishing, tending to constant local strife, a constant menace to the peace ON THE NEW DEPARTURE. 529 of the republic, dangerous to the welfare of the whole people; judging that the party in power was committed to sustain the carpet-baggers, and seeing that it constantly apologized for their misgovernment and crimes, the line of duty with him clearly lay in the New Departure. Having without compunc tion given up the Whig party when it had outlived its usefulness, he now for similar reason stepped from a narrow on to a broad platform, and as before with the triumph of just principles and the progress of the republic to impel him forward on his chosen course. It is worthy of observation that Mr. Greeley would, no doubt, sooner have expressed sympathy with the movement for a new party but that, as we have seen, its most eminent representative men were noted advocates of free trade as he was a noted advocate of the opposing doctrine. Upon those other great questions of pacification and governmental reform which came to form the platform of the party he had been unequivocally committed, both by word and deed, in advance of almost any of his cotemporaries. 34 CHAPTEE XXIX. A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Organization of the Liberal Republican Party Preliminary Tactics Debates in the Senate Eminent Republicans Join in the Movement The Cincinnati Convention Candidates for Nomination Mr. Greeley Successful The National Democratic Convention at Balti more Notices of Some of Its Eminent Men The Cincinnati Ticket Endorsed Mr. Greeley s Letters of Acceptance His Reception at Chappaqua, of the Democratic Committee, Notifying Him of Nomi nation The Canvass His Tour of New England and of The West Death of Mrs. Greeley Defeat At Work Again on The Tribune. THE " new-party movement " did not result in the formation of any regular political organization until the year 1872, early in May of which year the Liberal Republicans held a National Convention in the city of Cincinnati and formally placed plat form and ticket before the country for support. It has already appeared that the first movements made by those who proposed to themselves to institute a radical reform of parties were mainly conducted by free-traders and in the interest of revenue reform. There were several meetings of noted writers and journalists who came together even so early as the first year of President Grant s administration, with the object of informally discussing the question of revenue reform, and these at length resulted in a quite general agitation of the subject by the press and the intelligent public. The argu ments in behalf of the reform advocated by those here spoken of were heartily accepted by large numbers of Republicans and by members of the Democratic party generally. The former were not yet ready, however, to abandon a political organization whose history, as they believed, had been mainly honourable, and had conferred great benefit upon the republic and the cause of human progress. The reform movement gradually gained popular strength, however, and, advocated by some of the most thoughtful polit- (530) SENATORS SUMNER AND SCHURZ. 531 ical economists of the nation and a number of our most influential, independent public journals, it was entitled to the considerate examination of statesmen and especially of public men in control of affairs. But it was not brought into any notable discussion in the halls of Congress until the long ses sion of 1871-72, and then only, in such way as to receive general attention, in the Senate. As a rule, the House of Representatives proceeded with routine business, providing for the coming campaign, printing many speeches never delivered, and skipping the questions a settlement of which upon some policy or other was demanded by justice, states manship, and a decent respect for the national will. But the debates in the Senate made that chamber the scene of greatest attraction at the National Capital during many months. The administration was attacked for certain alleged abuses, corruptions, the exercise of unwarranted powers, for postponing the era of peace and harmony throughout the country. Of Republican Senators who assailed the adminis tration of President Grant, Charles Sumner was the most distinguished. He had ever been a leading and potential Republican not only, but may be truthfully said, I think, to have been for many years the most illustrious of American statesmen, the most faithful friend and the most powerful champion of human freedom. He assailed the administration, or rather the President, with even unusual eloquence and unwonted indignation. Senator Schurz was the great debater of the period in review. Not since the elder time have there been so many and so great manifestations of forensic powers as were here and now shown by this remarkable man. His genius as a statesman is, if I may so speak, both of tele scopic and microscopic power. It comprehends great truths, general systems of polity, with clearness and ease, and also observes all details and all technicalities without being thereby either at all beclouded or annoyed. There are few minds more comprehensive than his, few so subtle; and Ben Johnson some where says, " He that cannot contract the sight of his mind, as well as dilate and disperse it, wanteth a great faculty." In all the debates arising upon the various investigations about 532 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. this time made of the conduct of officials, Mr. Schurz appeared to be perfectly at home as to all the facts and perfectly familiar with all the principles and laws, whether national or interna tional, bearing upon them. In these intellectual combats he was often opposed by all the eminent men of the administra tion side of the Senate: by Mr. Morton, the undoubted leader of the Republicans, a man of vast mental powers, whose pon derous mind, the only one on his side of the Senate resembling that of Daniel Webster, though it may not be easily aroused, is, when set in active motion, apt to make wide room for its almost resistless course; by Senator Conkling, of ISTew York, a man not only of chivalric bearing but of great and brilliant powers of debate, whose clear and strong argumentation and keen invective are set forth in most magnificent diction, springing up, rich and fresh, from the well of English unde- filed; by Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, a highly skilful and very ready disputant, especially in questions of law; by Senator Carpenter, of Wisconsin, who was happily stated by Mr. Benjamin F. Butler to be worth to a powerful corporation a large annual retainer because " he had a tongue in his head;" by Senator Harlan, of Iowa, whose strong argumentation was ever accompanied by the most pleasing suavity of manner; by Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, who in the Senate often undertook to enact the role of peace-maker, and frequently made himself ridiculous by advocating both sides of the ques tion at issue, and with the most enjoyable ignorance of his preposterous attitudes, or, perhaps I should say, altitudes; by other Senators no less distinguished than some of these; but out of the grand m<>lte, the Senator from Missouri came tri umphant, like Ivanhoe at the gentle and joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby. If there were answer to many of Mr. Schurz s arguments, it was not then delivered, and has yet to be uttered. Other eminent Republican Senators besides Messrs. Sumner and Schurz approved the movement for a reform party. Sen ator Trumbull, of Illinois, was among the first to take this stand. The ablest constitutional lawyer in the Senate, the closest, and, perhaps, the strongest reasoner, in abstract logic, G-ENL. EDWARD D. BAKER. SENATOR A. G. THURMAN "LIBERAL" SENATORS. 533 in that body, he had for years been known by those who knew public men best as the steadiest statesman among all the emi nent men of the Republican party. In the most exciting times he maintained his presence of mind. In no turmoil and amid no clamour did the clearness and strength of his judgment ever for an instant desert him. His influence had been iirmly impressed upon much of the best legislation of his country, and he had long commanded universal respect not only on account of his great abilities but also because of his irreproach able personal character. Whatever might be said of others, it was agreed that Lyman Trumbull was sans peur et sans reproclie. Into the debates of this period he entered with great spirit and even unwonted power. Senator Fenton, of New York, may be described as the incarnation of suavity. Among living public men, he is the most accomplished courtier. He has the genius of courtesy. The President of the United States, if put to his corporal oath, and others familiar with New York politics, might testify that behind Mr. Fenton s fascinating manners there sometimes was hidden a double-deal. Arid yet it is probable, if they knew all, if they fully appreciated Mr. Fenton s real unwillingness to give offense, they would acquit him of any deceit more than is involved in the necessary hypocrisy of the highest good-breeding. In the animated debates of this famous session ol 1871-72, Senator Fenton took honourable part, and on one or two occasions exhibited great powers of eloquence and of argument. But it is probably true that he laboured more effectively in marking out the campaign than in the active operations. Senator Thomas W. Tipton, of Nebraska, took earnest part in the debates, humorously assailing the administration on many accounts, both general and special. Senator John A. Logan, of Illinois, maintained an unnatural silence until after the Cincinnati Convention. Democratic Senators did not feel it to be their duty to take active part in the debates, but Sen ator Blair openly sympathized with the new party movement, while Senator Thurman, of Ohio, the ablest man the Demo cratic party has had in Congress for many years, now and then 534: LITE OF HORACE GREELEY. joined in the discussions, and always in such way as to make the candid think that, if his party would truly accept him as a representative man, it might still live and be of benefit to the republic. Eminent Republicans in different parts of the country now joined in the reform movement. It is a remarkable fact, worthy the careful study of those who would fully understand and hon estly judge not only of the political history of the period under consideration, but of Mr. Greeley s candidacy for our highest office, that very many of those who had been leading men in the Eepublican party; who had been abolitionists when it was almost as much as one s life was worth to be an aboli tionist; that very many of these were, in 1872, convinced of the demoralization and corruption of the party in power. Mr. John W. Forney, of The Philadelphia Press, gave nota ble testimony to this fact very early in the year. There had been no truer Republican, no braver friend of freedom than he. During the war and for some years afterwards he resided at the National Capital, where also he conducted a daily jour nal. His warfare with President Johnson makes an almost unique instance of independence and pluck in Washington journalism since the death of Dr. Bailey of the old National Era. He now resigned the profitable office of Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, that he might be untrammelled as an editor, and at once proceeded to chastise " the party " for the illiberalism of many of its defenders and especially for their assaults upon eminent Republicans who demanded the reform and purification of the party, even if to reform and purify it it should become necessary to overthrow it. In every State there were large numbers of Republicans who sustained the rebellious Senators in very much that they did, and not a few who expressed the opinion that the best interests of the country demanded the defeat of the ad minis- tration through the means of a new political organization. It is true that many of these held the President in high esteem ; doubted neither his personal nor his political integrity. They believed he was surrounded by advisers whose counsel was pernicious; who made a trade of politics; and, utterly unprin- MR. VALLANDIGIIAM. 535 cipled, used the President to the detriment of the nation, the scandal of statesmanship, and the corruption of political morals. He would be more than a brave man who should say there were not many reasons for this opinion. There was also a strong tendency toward " the New Depart ure " in the Democratic party. The n rst notable impulse in this direction was given by the celebrated Clement L. Vallan- digham, of Ohio. Mr. Yallandigham had made himself excessively unpopular during the war. He had rendered moral aid and comfort to the rebellion. The conscientiousness of his conduct in no wise excused its culpability. Conscience, as well as reason itself, may be so abused as to cease to perform its proper functions. The greatest criminal of history: the criminal justly chargeable with the shedding of the most innocent blood, the subversion of the most right, and the accomplishment of the most wrong: the right name of this greatest of criminals is Perverted Conscience. During the war Mr. Vallandigham was culpably in the wrong. Neverthe less, the very vehemence of his feelings against a Union based upon force caused him to welcome peace, even upon terms which, earlier, he would have thought could not have been procured by any triumph that could have been gained. From this to the demand of a Union based upon perfect freedom, homogeneity, harmony, precluding the probability of another conflict of arms, was but a logical step. If Mr. Vallandigham had been unpatriotic in his opposition to the government in a war which had been forced upon it, he did what could be done to redeem his error by agreeing to all the terms demanded by the victors. A man of wonderful energy, of great power as a public speaker, he gave his whole soul, as it were, to the cause of " the New Departure," and it was not long till many Dem ocrats were known heartily to coincide with his views. His untimely death, under circumstances of such singular sadness, must be regarded as unfortunate to his reputation and to his country. It may be judged as certain that had he lived a few years longer he would have accomplished much that is good and great both for one and the other. The next most notable utterance, perhaps, in behalf of the 536 LIFE OF HOKACE GREELEY. New Departure, within the Democratic party, was that of The Missouri Eepublican newspaper. Though named "Repub lican," this journal had for years been one of the most widely circulated and influential of Democratic journals in the West. Singularly enough, the Eepublican journal of most note in St. Louis was named The Democrat. The Republican advocated the abandonment of the Democratic organization and the for mation of a new party, with great power. The State of Missouri early adopted this policy, and with such practical result as gave The Republican many arguments which it was difficult if not impossible to answer. Other Democratic journals also advocated the New Depart ure. Thus in the course of events it happened that months before the proper time to inaugurate the Presidential campaign of 1872, there were large numbers of persons in either of the existing political organizations who believed in the wisdom and the necessity of a new party for the accomplishment ot reforms and the practical establishment of principles which neither the Democratic nor the Republican party would un dertake. And it was well known that among the best citizens of the South many held similar opinions. Such, in brief, was the situation when the Cincinnati Con vention, the first national assemblage of Liberal Repub licans," was held. This convention was brought together iu the mode of primitive simplicity. No call of any " national committee " of any sort had been issued. The Liberal Repub licans of the State of Missouri had published an invitation to the friends of political reform to meet at Cincinnati, for the purpose of consultation, of the interchange of views, and for such action as they might think the interests of the country demanded. Long before the time designated in the invitation May 1, 1872, it became evident that the meeting would be largely attended, and would necessarily develop into a Na tional Convention. Indeed, the proposed meeting was spoken of, many weeks before it was held, as the coming National Convention of the Liberals, and formed a topic of constant conversation in political circles throughout the country and of daily articles in the public press. The fear began to be enter- WHITELAW REID, The Ne-w-York Tribune. THEODORE TILTON, The Golden Age. THE CINCINNATI CONVENTION. 537 tained by many reformers, not that the meeting might be a mere fiasco, but that it would be so largely attended that no power could keep it in order, much less evoke agreement, harmony out of elements acknowledged to be, in some respects, diverse, if not absolutely conflicting. And it is, perhaps, true, that no regular national convention of any political party, except the Chicago Convention of 1860, ever brought together so many people from such vast expanse of country, as the modest call of the Missouri Liberals brought to Cincinnati. Nearly every State and Territory in the Union was represented, while Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Penn sylvania, and New York were each represented by large num bers of citizens. The hotels of Cincinnati were taxed beyond their utmost capacity, and large numbers of private residences were hospitably opened for the accommodation of strangers. A Reunion and Reform Convention, over which Judge Stallo presided, was held at the same time. The Democratic State Convention of Kentucky was also in session in a city imme diately opposite Cincinnati. But without these accompanying meetings, the number who came in acceptance of the Missouri invitation, and of those who came to witness the proceedings, was simply prodigious. Never was " the Queen City," as Cincinnati has been often designated, so crowded on the occa sion of any political gathering. In the vast crowd, were many men of renown in the country or of influence in their respective sections. Carl Schurz him self became the President of the Convention. Mr. Edward Atkinson was at the head of the Massachusetts delegation. David A. Wells became chairman of that from Connecticut. From New York there were Whitelaw Reid, General John Cochrane, Waldo Hutchins, Henry R. Selden, General Ethan Allen, Theodore Tilton, Frank Leslie, Sinclair Tousey, and many other men of note. Senator Fenton was also present for a short time in the city, but, correctly judging that Mr. White- law Reid was Warwick enough for that or any occasion, took an early departure for Washington. From Pennsylvania came John Hickman, Alexander K. McClure, who had burned all the bridges behind him on his political journey, Morrow B. 538 LIFE OF HOKACE GEEELEY. Lowry, General Thomas L. Kane, and many others, long in fluential in the Republican party. Hon. George W. Julian, of Indiana, one of America s ablest and purest men, became one of the Yice-Presidents of the Convention, and for a time pre sided over its deliberations. From Ohio were Stanley Matthews, Jacob Brinkerhoff, Judge R. P. Spaulding, and many other notabilities. Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, was present, removing apples of discord. Illinois was represented by a host of influential men. Among them were Horace White, editor of The Chicago Tribune, John Wen tworth, Wirt Dexter, General Richard Rowett, Gustavus Kcerner, Jesse O. Norton, Leonard Swett, Jesse K. Dubois, John II. Bryant, O. M. Hatch. General Fitz Henry Warren (" On to Richmond!") was a dele gate from Iowa, as was also Hon. J. B. Grinnell. Hinton R. Helper in part represented North Carolina. Among those who had not been sent to represent any constituency in the meeting, but who had come to look upon the proceedings with their own eyes were very many men who had been prominent as politicians, journalists. Hence, before the meeting had been called to order ; before it was known that order could be eliminated out of so vast a number of men collected together in a manner not according to the customary forms, "the Cin cinnati Convention" was eliciting the attention of the public in all parts of the Union, the Executive Mansion and the Capitol at Washington forming no exceptions to the universal rule. At the appointed hour, Colonel William M. Grosvenor, of Missouri, called the meeting to order, saying: As Chairman of the Liberal Republican Committee, appointed by the Liberal Republican State Convention of Missouri, by which this Conven tion was called, it is my pleasure, gentlemen, to call you to order. This Convention, originated in a single State, has now embraced representa tives, and worthy representatives, of the Republican party in every State of the Union. [Applause.] Nothing can prove more effectually the depth and strength of the public sentiment to which we have appealed, than the fact that the call, originated so informally, originated in a State by no means the largest or the most potential in political affairs, has led to a Convention acknowledged by all to be not only the largest in point of numbers ever assembled, but the truest representation of the popular senti- THE CINCINNATI CONVENTION. 539 ment. [Applause.] Our appeal to the country, it appears, then, was based upon a correct judgment of the public feeling and the public need. It was so defined as to embody that will of the people which, after all, does rule and shall rule these United States. Men from that State, who took the risk of calling such a Convention, are here to-day, rejoicing in its success, and confident that the wisdom of the delegations here assembled, the wisdom of the people of the United States, will make its actions a success in November next. I need not make here the usual appeal for harmony. The men who surrendered their share in a victorious party because of their convictions of their duty, will not come here to struggle for personal preferences. Those preferences we lay upon the altar of our common cause. All else, save those convictions of duty, we can surrender, but those are our weapons, and we do not propose to throw them away in order to win the battle. [Applause.] In the firm belief, gentlemen, that this Convention, called originally for consultation, will act so wisely that the people of the United States, who stand behind it watching and ready to sustain it if it acts wisely, will give it triumph, in the firm belief that it will meet that demand which is felt all over the country for something more than consultation for a nominee who shall represent the people, I ask you to go forward with us to organize for that struggle against the power which has so long and so injuriously controlled party organizations and political power. [Loud applause.] Gentlemen, by direction of the Executive Committee, I have the honour to name as your temporary Chairman, Judge Stanley Matthews, of Ohio. Upon being escorted to the chair, which, by the way had come down from the revolutionary era, Judge Matthews deliv ered an appropriate address. Temporary secretaries were appointed, and a resolution adopted, that the gentlemen in attendance from the various States elect delegates double the number of the votes of the States respectively in the Electoral College, for the transaction of the business of the convention, and the meeting adjourned. On the next day a permanent organization of the Convention was effected on the plan embraced in Colonel Grosvenor s resolution. Carl Schurz was selected as permanent President. His speech upon this occasion was one of the most stirring and eloquent he ever delivered. The usual committees were appointed, and the sessions of the day, as well as a long session during the evening, were spent in general discussion, which at times became fairly boisterous. The Committee on Eesolu- tions were unable speedily to agree to a report, and the Con vention became impatient of the delay. That the confusion 540 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. did not become inextricable, and the Convention break up in disorder, was due to the hard work of the President and the genuine good sense of the delegates. It was Donn Piatt, of The Washington Capital newspaper, who remarked in the height of the excitement: "There is too much brains and not enough whiskey here." The wit expressed the idea that if there had been less of brains and of character among the delegates the Convention would have been more easily man aged; would have taken anything cut-and-dried as it came along. Such could not have been the case with the Cincinnati Convention of 1872. At length, on Friday, May 3d, Horace White, Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, brought in the address and platform agreed upon. The document was read amid constant and tumultuous interruptions of applause, Mr. Schurz himself reading it in his clear and penetrating voice, so that every word was heard by the vast audience. The administration now in power has rendered itself guilty of wanton disregard of the laws of the land, and of usurping powers not granted by the Constitution ; it has acted as if the laws had binding force only for those who are governed, and not for those who govern. It has thus struck a blow at the fundamental principles of Constitutional Government, and the liberties of the citizen. The President of the United States has openly used the powers and opportunities of his high office for the promotion of personal ends. He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in places of power and responsibility to the detriment of the public interest. He has used the public service of the Government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence, and has interfered, with tyrannical arrogance, in the political affairs of States and municipalities. He has rewarded with influential and lucrative offices men w r ho had acquired his favour by valuable presents, thus stimulating the demoral ization of our political life by his conspicuous example. He has shown himself deplorably unequal to the tasks imposed upon him by the necessities of the country, and culpably careless of the respon sibilities of his high office. . The partisans of the administration, assuming to be the Republican party, and controlling its organization, have attempted to justify such wrongs, and palliate such abuses, to the end of maintaining partisan ascendency. They have stood in the way of necessary investigations and indispensable reforms, pretending that no serious fault could be found with the present THE CINCINNATI PLATFORM. 541 administration of public affairs, thus seeking to blind the eyes of the people. They have kept alive the passions and resentments of the late civil war, to use them to their own advantage ; they have resorted to arbitrary meas ures in direct conflict with the organic law, instead of appealing to the better instincts of the Southern people by restoring to them those rights the enjoyment of which is so indispensable to a successful administration of their local affairs, and would tend to revive a patriotic and hopeful national feeling. They have degraded themselves and the name of their party, once justly entitled to the confidence of the nation, by a base sycophancy to the dis penser of Executive power and patronage, unworthy of Republican free dom; they have sought to silence the voice of just criticism and stifle the moral sense of the people, and to subjugate public opinion by tyrannical party discipline. They are striving to maintain themselves in authority for selfish ends by an unscrupulous use of the power which rightfully belongs to the people, and should be employed only in the service of the country. Believing that an organization thus led and controlled can no longer be of service to the best interests of the Republic, we have resolved to make an independent appeal to the sober judgment, conscience, and patriotism of the American people. KESOLtJTIONS. We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States in National Conven tion assembled at Cincinnati, proclaim the following principles as essential to just government: 1. We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of Government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, colour, or per suasion, religious or political. 2. We pledge ourselves to maintain the Union of these States, emanci pation and enfranchisement, and to oppose any reopening of the questions settled by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments of the Constitution. 3. We demand the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the rebellion which was finally subdued seven years ago, believing that universal amnesty will result in complete pacifi cation in all sections of the country. 4. Local self-government, with impartial suffrage, will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and the freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual the largest liberty consistent with public order, for the State self-government, and for the Nation a return to the methods of peace and the Constitutional limitations of power. 5. The Civil Service of the Government has become a mere instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition, and an object of selfish greed. 542 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and breeds a demoral ization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government. 6. We therefore regard a thorough reform of the Civil Service as one of the most pressing necessities of the hour; that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only valid claims to public employment; that the offices of the Government cease to be a matter of arbitrary favoritism and patronage, and that public station shall become again a place of honour. To this end it is imperatively required that no President shall be a candi date for reelection. 7. We demand a system of Federal taxation which shall not unneces sarily interfere with the industry of the people, and which shall provide the means necessary to pay the expenses of the Government, economically administered, the pensions, the interest on the public debt, and a moderate annual reduction of the principal thereof; and recognizing that there are, in our midst, honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard to the respective systems of protection and free trade, we remit the discus sion of the subject to the people in their Congressional Districts, and the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free from Executive interference or dictation. 8. The public credit must be sacredly maintained, and we denounce repudiation in every form and guise. 9. A speedy return to specie payments is demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial morality and honest government. 10. We remember with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and no act of ours shall ever detract from their justly -earned fame or the full rewards of their patriotism. 11. We are opposed to all further grants of land to railroads or other corporations. The public domain should be held sacred to actual settlers. 12. We hold that it is the duty of the Government, in its intercourse with foreign nations, to cultivate the friendships of peace, by treating with all on fair and equal terms, regarding it alike dishonourable either to demand what is not right or submit to what is wrong. 13. For the promotion and success of these vital principles, and the sup port of the candidates nominated by this Convention, we invite and cordi ally welcome the cooperation of all patriotic citizens, without regard to previous political affiliations. The candidates for the Presidential nomination were Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, B. Gratz Brown, of Mis souri, David Davis, of Illinois, Horace Greeley, of New York, and Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois. Ex-Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, received the vote of his State on the first ballot, and Chief Justice Chase received a number of votes at dif ferent times during the ballotings. The three strongest candidates were Messrs. Adams, Greeley, MESSES. ADAMS, DAVIS, AND TRUMBULL. 543 and Trumbull. and it was well understood that one of these sooner or later would be successful. The candidacy of Mr. Davis, one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, a man of great good sense and of extensive popularity among lawyers, was injured by the mode in which it was con ducted by his friends, some of whom, and these the most active, were entitled to little consideration on account either of talents or character. It thus happened that Judge Davis s candidacy, not himself personally, incurred the opposition of The Chicago Tribune and other journals approving the reform movement, by whose influence he was made to figure as the weakest of the prominent candidates, whereas, but for this journalistic opposition, he would surely have been among the strong candidates. Judge Davis was smothered by his friends. Mr. Adams was the strongest of the candidates at the begin ning, and so continued during several ballots. He was strong because he deserved to be. Of an illustrious name, he had filled several positions of exalted trust, and in every one had honoured himself and his country. Having few if any of the qualities of a politician, he was justly regarded as a statesman who would deserve if he should not receive the support of his countrymen. Senator Trumbull, like Mr. Adams, was known to be a man of cold exterior, somewhat haughty manners, and with the least possible element of demagogism in his nature. His weakness as a candidate lay in his strength as a statesman. He had been a prominent actor in partisan questions for many years, and greatly influential in nrnch legislation which, it was admitted, had been beneficial to the country, but in regard to some of which, after all, there was difference of opinion. A principal object being to unite the opposition to the party in power, Mr. Trumbull s long public life, honourable and greatly useful though the men of the convention agreed it was, was considered as militating against his availability. Besides, the delegation of his own State was divided a fact for which, to this day, no sufficient explanation has been made. If Mr. Adams and Mr. Trumbull commanded the unmixed admiration of the most thoughtful men of the Convention ; if 544 LIFE OF HORACE GBEELEY. it was true that either one of those statesman, if nominated, would have been likely to bring to his support the "judgments of the people and the submission of the capitalists; " yet was it believed that Mr. Greeley had the greater popular strength. Mr. Watterson, of the Louisville Courier-Journal, expressed the truth, when he said that Mr. Greeley " makes a direct appeal to that higher element than Wall street, the people in the rural districts, who, ever jealous of the money -power, are never unable to overthrow it when they have the heart I will not say the mind to go for it." And he presented the ideas of the convention in respect of Mr. Greeley as an avail able candidate more correctly than I have seen them elsewhere stated, when he said: Horace Greeley is the best known citizen of America. His career has made a deeper impression upon his fellow-citizens than that of any living man. His face is familiar to everybody. His picture swings in more cottages and log-cabins than that of any of his contemporaries. It is a kind face, the face of an able, honest old man, who never pursued a fallen enemy and is incapable of deceit. His record is, likewise, full of whim sical, odd, attractive points. More can be said for him and against than can be said of any other candidate who was ever put in nomination for the Presidency. But, casting up the balance, this result can be struck off, he never committed an error that sprung from rnalignance or venality, and all his short comings and weaknesses Lean to virtue s side. He was the over-zealous partisan of freedom ; the over-zealous partisan of peace; the over-zealous partisan of Protection. He has habitually sacrificed himself to good impulses, sometimes misdirected and sometimes out of season, but always generous and brave. He did not fear the slave power when it controlled the politics of the whole country. He did not fear the war power when he boldly went to Canada to make an impossible peace. He did not fear the power of preju dice when he obeyed the generous suggestions of a nature always over flowing, and went to Richmond to open the prison-doors of Jefferson Davis. He has feared nothing in a long life of striving after both ideal and practical standards, having been equally courageous and whimsical, able and kindly. They will laugh at his foibles, but they cannot deny that there is a cer tain genial power even in his foibles. They may cartoon him and lampoon him; but their pictures and their jokes will only serve to make that com- ical, kind old face the more pleasing and the more familiar, if that be HIS POPULARITY. 545 possible, to the people, and to render his peculiarities the less objectionable by producing a popular reaction in his favour. Mr. Greelcy has as many elements of strength -within himself as many of what the candidates call "running qualities" as any candidate who ever asked the suffrages of the American people. In these he resembles Mr. Lincoln. His old while coat will prove a counterpart to the famous surtout of Napoleon, which had only to be raised upon a walking stick to muster the troops of all Europe into the field. His old white hat will bo a homely modern illustration of the white plume of Henry of Navarre, shining with the inspiring brightness of an oriflaine in the thick of the fight. It does not need George Alfred Townsend and Frank Blair to predict that much for the philosopher of peace, whose emblem is the emblem of Greeley, WHITE. This is an epoch of peace, and peace has no representative so conspic uous as Horace Greeley. He is on record as the first to proclaim universal amnesty. He is on record as the most powerful assailant of those scourges of the South and of honest government, the carpet-baggers. No man, in himself, could possess fewer objectionable traits to the Democrats, who will take him, if they take the movement which has put him in the field, with real enthusiasm. It has been evident all along that the Democracy have desired only a chance to indorse the Cincinnati -movement. It could have been wished that the chance now presented had been attended by no circumstance to quality or blot it. But, such as it is, it is not marred by the presence of Horace Greeley. It would have required some pulling to get Adams through the maze of Democratic prejudices; it would have required a good deal of pushing to drive Trumbull through, but as far as these preju dices go, Horace Greeley s known honesty, kindliness, and magnanimity will make their own way, and the Democratic people in spite of the poli ticians will go it with a whoop. Governor B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, was nominated as the candidate for Vice-President. With certain members of the Convention there was dissat isfaction with Mr. Greeley s nomination on two accounts: First, because the reform movement had began with the free traders, and Mr. Greeley had ever been a champion of " Protection." Indeed, Mr. Greeley himself, not many months before his nomination, in reply to a Democratic correspondent naming him as a candidate for the Presidency, had written: NEW-YORK, Oct. 18, 1871. DEAR STR: I have yours of the 14th inst. I have no doubt that the policy you suggest is that which your party ought to adopt. They should have taken up Salmon P. Chase in 1868 ; then, as the result of that contest, the return of genuine peace and thrift would have been promoted. That 35 546 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. policy gave you more last year in Missouri than could have been achieved by a party triumph. You only err as to the proper candidate. J am not the man you need. Your party is mostly Free-trade, and I am a ferocious Protectionist. I have no doubt that I might be nominated and elected by your help, but it would place us all in a false position. If I, who am adversely interested, can see this, I am sure your pood sense will, on reflec tion, realize it. You must take some man like Gratz Brown, or Trumbull, or General Cox, late Secretary of the Interior, and thus help to pacify and reunite our country anew. Yours, HORACE GREELEY. If he himself could perceive that he would not be a proper candidate for a party " mostly free-trade," it is not surprising that earnest free-traders should have expressed dissatisfaction upon his nomination. But, secondly, there were those who believed that his nomination had been secured by trickery. It was freely charged that Mr. Gratz Brown and Frank Blair had been guilty of a species of cheating, and many were indignant thereat. This charge, which was substantially true, except that the intrigue injured rather than benefitted Mr. Greeley, who, but for this, would, perhaps, have been nominated sooner than he was, lost him more friends than his well known " Pro tection " views. For upon the tariff question, the platform had been so framed that no one could object to the presidential candidate, whatever might be his views upon that subject. The question was referred directly to the people, and its deci sion left with Congress. But the Blair-Brown intrigue, being in reality a hostile machination against the distinguished President of the Convention the intellectual leader of Reform justly received indignant criticism, not any of which, however, belonged to Mr. Greeley. 1 He, as well as most J Mr. John D. Defrees, long Government Printer, had written to Mr. Whitelaw Reid, suggesting Mr. Greeley as candidate for Vice-President. Mr. Greeley wrote to his friend : NEW-YORK, March 10, 1872. FRIEND DEFKEES Reid has shown me your letter. Very good. But let us have no bargains, no trades, no understandings, except that the Cincinnati Convention shall nominate that ticket which can get most votes, and be composed of worthy, capable men. We must have nothing cut-and-dried, but the genuine voice of the people. Yours, HORACE GBEELEY. JOHK D. DEFBEES, ESQ., Washington, D. C. Neither Mr- Greeley nor any one of his confidential friends did anything, or said any word, inconsistent with this letter to Mr. Defrees POPULAR RESPONSE TO NOMINATION. 547 of those who had gone into the movement for a new party, took no part in intrigues. A somewhat sharp correspondence between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Schurz grew out of this unfor tunate affair, whereby the eminent Senator was convinced of Mr. Greeley s entire blamelessness throughout. And no one henceforth during the canvass did so much for the cause for mally inaugurated at Cincinnati as Carl Schurz. Mr. Greeley s nomination was greatly unsatisfactory to not a few Liberal Republicans, whether of the Convention or not. Politicians and journals of the opposition were at first dis posed to treat the matter as little better than a joke. They seemed inclined to look upon Mr. Greeley as he had been too long and often misrepresented, not as God and his own studies and labours had made him. They set up a false Horace Greeley, and cast gibes at him. They did not do so long. Mr. Thomas Nast continued to make the cultivated public blush at his humiliating prostitution of genius in the cartoons of Harper s Weekly illustrated newspaper; but the politicians of the Republican party very soon perceived that Mr. Greeley was a strong candidate, and the "party organs" were not long in discovering the same fact. The great body of the people man ifested respect for Mr. Greeley s genius and a genuine love and admiration of his character. They looked through the mis representations of years, and saw him as he really was, a great, good, honest man, whose foibles did not amount to vices, whose eccentricities were only peccadillos against conventional trammels, more honoured in the breach than the observance. The response to his nomination by Southern men was nota bly enthusiastic. The venerable Leslie Coombes, of Kentucky, telegraphed that the action of the Convention was an inspira tion. Other eminent Southern men were scarcely less emphatic in their expressions. It soon became apparent, in fine, that Horace Greeley was the best known of all America s public men to the whole people and, whether a majority would sup port him for President or not, he occupied a high position in their respect and a warm place in their considerate affections. Mi 1 . Greeley had not been nominated a fortnight before the managers of the party in power saw that they would have to 548 LIFE OF H.OBACE GREELEY. use every possible means of political influence in order to defeat him ; that every exertion would have to be made or he would be borne into office upon a tidal wave of pcfpular appro val created by Reform principles and his own great personal strength with the people. Every exertion was made by those opposed to him to destroy his wide and growing popularity. A number of men were put to work by the national executive committee of the Republicans examining the files of The Tribune from its establishment to procure for publication every sentence ever printed in the editorial columns of that journal, whether written by Mr. Greeley or not, that might injure him with the people. Great banking-houses, with vast sums of money, were enlisted to fight the campaign against him, before his competitor had been nominated. Influences of all kinds, in fine, ever used in political management were at once set in motion against him. Mr. Greeley himself calmly felt the popular pulse. Think ing, and having every reason to think, from the manifest signs of the times, that the movement of which he had been made the most prominent representative man, was not a mere partizan ^meute, but a beneficent political revolution, he accepted the nomination of the Cincinnati Convention in a letter which may long be read with profit by his countrymen: NEW-YORK, May 20, 1872. GENTLEMEN : I have chosen not to acknowledge your letter of the 3d inst. until I could learn how the work of your Convention was received in all parts of our great country, and judge whether that work was approved and ratified by the mass of our fellow-citizens. Their response has from day to day reached me through "telegrams, letters, and the comments of journalists independent of official patronage, and indifferent to the smiles or frowns of power. The number and character of these unconstrained, unpurchased, unsolicited utterances, satisfy me that the movement which found expression at Cincinnati has received the stamp of public approval, and been hailed by a majority of our countrymen as the harbinger of a better day for the Republic. I do not misinterpret this approval as especially complimentary to myself, nor even to the chivalrous and justly-esteemed gentleman with whose name I thank your Convention for associating mine. I receive and wel come it as a spontaneous and deserved tribute to that admirable platform of principles wherein your Convention so tersely, so lucidly, so forcibly, MR. GREKLEYS LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. set forth the convictions which impelled, and the purposes which guided, its course, a platform which, casting behind it the wreck and rubbish of worn-out contentions and by-gone feuds, embodies in fit and few words the needs and aspirations of to-day. Though thousands stand ready to con demn your every act, hardly a syllable of criticism or cavil has been aimed at your platform, of which the substance may be fairly epitomized as follows: "First All the political rights and franchises which have been acquired through our late bloody convulsion must and shall be guaranteed, maintained, enjoyed, respected, evermore. "Second All the political rights and franchises which have been lost through that convulsion should and must be promptly restored and re-established, so that there shall be henceforth no proscribed class and no disfranchise d caste within the limits of our Union, whose long-estranged people shall reunite and fraternize upon the broad basis 01 universal amnesty with impartial suffrage. " Third That, subject to our solemn constitutional obligation to maintain the equal rights of all citizens, onr policy should aim at local self-government, and not at central ization; that the civil authority should be supreme over the military; that the writ of habeas corpus should be jealously upheld as the safeguard of personal freedom; that the individual citizen should enjoy the largest liberty consistent with public order, and that there shall be no Federal subversion of the internal polity of the several States and muni cipalities, but that each shall be left free to enforce the rights and promote tJie well- being of its inhabitants by such means as the judgment of its own people shall pre scribe. Fourth There shall be a real and not merely a simulated reform in the civil service of the Republic, to which end it is indispensable that the chief dispenser of its vast official patronage shall be shielded from the main temptation to use his power selfishly by a rule inexorably forbidding and precluding his re-election. "Fifth That the raising of revenue, whether by tariff or otherwise, shall be recog nized and treated as the people s immediate business, to be shaped and directed by them through their representatives in Congress, whose action thereon the President must neither overrule by his veto, attempt to dictate, nor presume to punish by bestowing office only on those who agree with him, or withdrawing it from those who do not. "Sixth That the public lands must be sacredly reserved for occupation and acquisi tion by cultivators, and not recklessly squandered on the projectors of railroads for which our people have no present need, and the premature construction of which is annually plunging us into deeper and deeper abysses of foreign indebtedness. "Seventh That the achievement of these grand purposes of universal beneficence is expected and sought at the hands of all who approve them, irrespective of past affilia tions. "Eighth That the public faith must, at all hazards, be maintained, and the national credit preserved. " Ninth That the patriotic devotedness and inestimable services of our fellow-citizens, who, as soldiers or sailors, upheld the flag and maintained the unity of the Republic, s-hall ever be gratefully remembered and honourably requited." These propositions, so ably and forcibly presented in the platform of your Convention, have already fixed the attention and commanded the assent of a large majority of our countrymen, who joyfully adopt them, as I do, as the basis of a true, beneficent national reconstruction; of a new departure from jealousies, strifes, and hates, which have no longer ade quate motive or even plausible pretext, into an atmosphere of peace, fraternity, and mutual good-will. In vain do the drill-sergeants of decay, ing organizations flourish menacingly their truncheons, and angrily insist 550 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. that the files shall be closed and straightened. In vain do the whippers-in of parties once vital, because rooted in the vital needs of the hour, protest against straying and bolting, denounce men nowise their inferiors as traitors and renegades, and threaten them with infamy and ruin. I am confident that the American people have already made your cause their own, fully resolved that their brave hearts and strong arms shall bear it on to triumph. In this faith, and with the distinct understanding, that, if elected, I shall be the President, not of a party, but of the whole people, I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen North and South are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has too long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are, and must henceforth remain, brethren. Yours gratefully, HORACE GREELEY. To Hon. CARL SCHURZ, President; Hon. GEORGE W. JULIAN, Vice-Presi dent; and Messrs. "Wii. E. MCLEAN, JOHN G. DAVIDSON, J. H. KHODES, Secretaries, of the National Convention of the Liberal Republicans of the United States. The next great practical question to be decided in the cam paign was, whether the Democratic party, by authoritative action, would actually proceed upon the New Departure; would approve the principles and endorse the nominations of the Cincinnati Convention. Mr. Greeley, before the publication of the foregoing letter, had developed so great popular strength, that very many influential Democrats and influential Democratic journals, had advocated his nomination by the Democracy. Two able journals held out against him The New-York World and The Chicago Times. Among influential men in the Democratic party I only think of two who made active and powerful opposition to the acceptance of Mr. Gree ley s candidacy. These were the Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware, and the Hon. Darnel W. Yoorhees, of Indiana. Of these, Mr. Yoorhees was the more vehement, perhaps. He made no disguise whatever of his feelings, proclaiming them openly, and with his accustomed strength and eloquence of speech, in the House of Representatives. But notwithstanding the influence of these journals and these eminent men aided also by that of some other journals and other public men, there was a strong and general feeling in the Democratic party in favour of Mr. Greeley. This found ample demonstration at the National Convention 552 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELET. of the year which was held in the city of Baltimore on the 9th of July. In not a few respects this was the most remarkable assem blage of a partisan nature of which our political annals furnish any account. In the first place, there was not a State or a Territory of the Union which was not fully represented. Indeed, both the regular delegates and the alternates were present from most of the States, so that the party could not have been better represented in respect of numbers. There could be no suspicion that the party was not fully represented. Thirdly, the most eminent men of the party, from all sections of the country were members of the Convention. General John A. McClernand, Cyrus H. McCormick, "William F. Cool- baugh, S. S. Marshall, were among the delegates from Illinois; Governor Hoffman himself was at the head of the New York delegation; Messrs. Aiken, O Conner, and Chestnut, of South Carolina, Gwin and Barksdale, of Mississippi, Beck, McIIenry, and Mallory, of Kentucky, Reagan and Henderson, of Texas, and many others of equal prominence were present from the South. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a grandson of the author of the Declaration of Independence, was temporary chairman of the Convention. Thomas S. Bocock was also present from Virginia. From Pennsylvania were ex-Governor Bigler, Mr. Samuel J. Randall, and a number of other influential politi cians. One of the Yice-Presidents was Bayless W. Hanna, of Indiana, long the law partner of Mr. Yoorhees, at this time Attorney General of the State. Senators Casserly and Kelley were among the representatives of the Pacific Slope. Senator Stockton, of New Jersey, was^a delegate. Montgomery Blair was a member of the Committee on Resolutions. Ex-Senator James R. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, was selected to preside over the deliberations of the Convention. There were these and many others who had long been representative men of Democ racy, who had often been entrusted with high official position by the party. The party was, therefore, by the more than full delegations present adequately represented as a national organ ization, while the unusually large number of strong and influential men among the delegates, gave evidence that the AUGUST BELMONT. 553 talents and character of the Democracy wert also fully repre sented. If there ever was a delegate convention truly and wholly representative of a party, it was the Baltimore Conven tion of 1872. Another remarkable fact as to this Convention which ought to be mentioned was its enthusiasm. This, under ordinary circumstances, is a matter of course. But in this case the circumstances were extraordinary. Here were the representa tive men of a great party: a party in a majority of voters in several States, and with a strong organization in all: and they were about to surrender their organization and to adopt as their standard-bearer the man who of all others in the nation had done the most to defeat their old doctrines and to drive them from power. The party by which they had been defeated was now surely divided, and they believed it to have become corrupt by the long possession of power, and its further con trol of affairs to be detrimental to the republic. There never was a stronger temptation to a party to "divide and conquer." Indeed, the division of the Republicans was already an accom plished fact. The Chicago Convention of 1860 had no stronger reasons to expect a victory through the divisions of the Demo cratic party than the Baltimore Convention of 1872 had to expect victory through the divisions of the Republicans. And yet, in the adoption of "the New Departure," and in the interest of the whole coiintry, present and future, these dele gates gave up their organization, and firmly bound their political destinies with those whom they had ever opposed. When this action of the Baltimore Convention shall come to be fully, dispassionately, honestly considered, it will be regarded as the sublimest act of a political party of which the history of our country gives any account. This sentiment of the sacrifice of party that greater good might come to the country, was one of the first manifestations in the Convention. In his remarks calling the Convention to order, Mr. August Belmont, chairman of the National Com mittee, said: The American people look with deep solicitude to your deliberations. It is for you to devise means by which to free them from the evils under LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. which they are suffering; but, in order to attain that end, you are called upon to make every sacrifice of personal and party preference. However much you might desire to fight the coming battle for our rights and liber ties under one of the Democratic party, it will become your duty to dis card all considerations of party tradition, if the selection of good and wise men outside of our ranks offers better chances of success. You must remember that you are here not only as Democrats, but as citizens of a common country, and that no sacrifice can be too great which she de mands at your hands. And in suggesting the temporary chairman, he said: I have the honour to propose lo you, as your temporary Chairman, a distinguished and venerable citizen of Virginia, the grandson of the patriot and statesman, Thomas Jefferson. It is an auspicious omen that the scion of the author of the Declaration of Independence is to inaugu rate the struggle of the Democracy for the freedom and equality of every American citizen, and against oppression and tyranny in our fair land. This same spirit of " sacrifice of personal and party pre ference " continued throughout the whole sittings of the Con vention. When Mr. Doolittle assumed the chair as President of the Convention, he delivered an address of wonderful power and eloquence, than which no American speech has had a more stirring effect upon the listening multitude. Speaking of the meaning of the proposed union of Liberal Republicans and Democrats Mr. Doolittle said: It does not mean the abandonment of what is true, of what is just, of what is good. It means no union of dead upon dead issues, but a union of living men upon living issues of the present. It means no union for the spoils of office, but it means a union of men of the same faith, upon the great paramount issues of the present hour, a frank, manly, honourable, and equal union of men who have the sagacity, sense, and moral courage to accept the situation. It means atmion of men who have the sagacity to see what is past, and to deal with the issues of the present, and for the future to do their duty to their country, their God, and their fellow-men. The issue of to-day is not the repeal of the Missouri compromise, nor the question of slavery in the Territories, upon which alone the Republican party was organized in 1856. It is not upon that which followed. The Lecompton Constitution for Kansas divided the Democratic party in twain, and elevated Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860. It is not a question of secession, nor of war to put down Rebellion, nor the aboli tion of slavery in the Southern States by military order or by Constitu tional amendment, upon which Lincoln was reflected in 1864. Nor yet is it the question of reconstruction, nor of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth MR. DOOLTTTLE S ADDRESS. 555 Amendments, nor the question of negro suffrage, nor of the establishment by Federal power of universal suffrage as a condition precedent to the States of the South having any rights or existence as States of the Union. It is none of these questions that is now the issue. All these have been issues in the past, great issues, sufficient in themselves to create and to dissolve political parties, because ideas are stronger than men or parties; but they are all past issues; they have been fought and fought to the end in the forum as in the field, and they are no more in issue to-day than the Mexican War or the "War of the Rebellion. We couldn t reopen them if we would, and they falsely misrepresent our purposes who say that we would reopen them if we could. This great union, therefore, means no step backward. "Forward," is the word; and first of all it means to-day, for all other States of the South, what is already done in Missouri. Instead of proscriptive test oaths, suspensions of habeas corpus, and military despotism, it means personal freedom for the individual and republican form of Government for all, instead of negro supremacy upheld by pros cription and the bayonet. It means equal rights to all men, white as well as black. Instead of thieving Governments organized to plunder sub jugated States, it means elective domination once more, utility, and integrity. Instead of strife, hate, and robbeiy, it means justice, liberty, peace, loyalty, good will, and, gentlemen, for our whole country, East, West, North, and South. It means instead of a War President, trained only in the military school, and whose whole character has been formed on the ideas, arts, habits, and despotism of military life, a Peace President, trained in the ideas, arts, blessings, and republican simplicty of peace and universal freedom; of peace not enchained, of liberty not under arrest, waiting trial, sentence, and execution b} drum-head court-martial, but that liberty and that peace which the Constitution secures by placing civil law above the sword, by preserving in full vigour the sacred writ of habefis corpus and right of trial by jury. It means another thing, and, per haps, the most important of them all ; it means to arrest the centralization of power in the Federal Government ; it means to assert the vital prin ciple of our republican system, in which it lives and moves and has its very being; that Constitutions are made by people in their sovereign capacity, for the express purpose of defining and limiting the powers of the Government the powers of all Governments, State and National. It means that we are determined that Presidents and Governors, Congress and State Legislatures, and every department of the Government shall obey the Constitution. It means, also, a genuine Civil Service Eeform, beginning with the Presidential office. It means to put an end forever to certain practices which have grown up with this Administration, which have driven so many of the ablest Republicans to join this Liberal move ment, and which have deeply wounded the hearts of all the Republicans as well as Democrats in this country practices which never existed under any other Administration, which are but too well known to all the world, and which our nation s good reputation will be consulted by not even naming. It means also to give strength and stability to our financial 556 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. affairs and our national credit by bringing honesty, and economy, and fidelity to every position, Federal, State, and municipal, where public moneys are collected and disbursed. It means also the honest payment of all our obligations. It means to give a higher tone and greater vigour to the administration of our foreign and domestic affairs, so as to com- Jiand the respect and confidence of our own people and of all the civilized ttorld. It means to place in the highest offices of our Government men of whom all the world will say : " They are honest and they are capable." That in these manly utterances Mr. Doolittle faithfully rep resented the great body of the Convention was evident from the fact that almost every sentence he spoke was greeted by general applause, not a few of his remarks receiving universal and boisterous cheers. But the action of the Convention demonstrated its sublime magnanimity. And in this there was a grand appropriateness, for in adopting Horace Greeley as its candidate, the Democratic party recognized him who was the foremost representative of the policy of sublime magna nimity for the complete and perpetual pacification of the country. The resolutions of the Cincinnati Convention having been adopted, a formal ballot for Presidential candidate was taken, the greatest enthusiasm prevailing as the different States announced their votes, and resulted: For Horace Greeley, of New York, 686 ; Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsyl vania, 21; James A. Bayard, of Delaware, 16; W. S. Groesbeck, of Ohio, 2 ; blank votes 7. Then, the Convention being a scene of gratified feelings, not attempted to be repressed, the band played "The Battle- Cry of Freedom," thousands of persons joining in the chorus. Mr. Brown was also formally nominated as the candidate for Vice- President, soon after which the Convention adjourned without day. Mr. Doolittle, and a delegate from each one of the States, were selected as a Committee to formally notify Mr. Greeley of his nomination. A meeting of the Committee and Mr. Greeley took place at New-York, July 12th. Mr. Doolittle said: MR. GREELEY The National Democratic Convention, recently held at Baltimore, charged us with the pleasing duty of waiting on you in person, to notify you of its unanimous nomination of yourself as a candidate for the Presidency. We were informed that it would be agreeable to meet us ACCEFfS THE BALTIMORE NOMINATION. 557 here at this time, and we have come in a body to place in your hands this official notification. The published proceedings of our Convention show great unanimity, but those only who took part in them can realize the cordiality and enthusiasm with which it resolved to sustain the Liberal Republican movement to cooperate with all patriotic citizens to support the principles declared at Cincinnati, and resolved, also, as the best and surest mode of giving effect to those great principles to nominate and elect the same candidate. We both witnessed and felt that cordiality and enthusiasm. Mr. Doolittle then introduced the members of the Committee in person to Mr. Greeley, and, the ceremony of introduction over, he spoke as follows: I should need time were I to attempt to reply fitly and fully to the important, and I need not say, gratifying communication. It may be that I should reply in writing, but as I have addressed a letter, which has been pretty widely considered, to the Liberal Republican Convention, it may not be necessary. I can only say now that I accept your nomination; accept it in the spirit in which it was offered. [Cheers.] I am at present in a position which, doubtless, many would regard as a proud one, but which is still an embarrassing one, because it involves the temporary, and, I trust, only temporary, annoyance of a misconstruction of my motives on the part of some valued and life-long friends. I am confident that time alone is necessary to vindicate my motives to all candid observ ers, and to convince all of the disinterestedness and patriotism of the course I am pursuing and intended to pursue long before I was assured of so much cooperation and sympathy. [Cheers.] The time will come, and, I trust in God, the opportunity too, when the world will see that you are no less Democrats because you have pursued the course you have, and that I am no less a Republican because I accept your nomination. [Cheers.] Here Mr. Greeley s voice faltered with emotion. He recovered himself, and continued. I am not much in the habit of receiving a nom ination for the Presidency. [Great laughter.] I am consequently unable to reply as readily and fluently as others might. [Renewed laughter.] 1 can only say I shall be happy to see all of you, or at least as many of you as can come, at my humble farmer home, where I shall be to-morrow, and where we shall be able to converse and confer more freely than here. If 3 T ou will come, I shall be happy to make you welcome to the best the farm affords [more laughter and cheers] ; and now I simply wish you farewell. To the letter of notification, which was couched in very handsome terms, Mr. Greeley replied on the 18th. lie wrote: NEW- YORK, July 18, 1872. GENTLEMEN: Upon mature deliberation, it seems fit that I should give to your letter of the 10th hist, some further and fuller response than 558 UFK OK IIOKACK GUK!:I;::Y. the hasty, unpremeditated words in which I acknowledged and accepted your nomination at our meeting on the 12th. That your Convention saw flt to accord its highest honour to one who had been prominently and pointedly opposed to your party in the earnest and sometimes angry controversies of the last forty years is essentially noteworthy. That many of you originally preferred that the liberal Republicans should present another candidate for President, and would more readily have united with us in the support of Adams or Trumbull, Davis or Brown, is well known. I owe my adoption at Baltimore wholly to the fact that I had already been nominated at Cincinnati, and that a concentration of forces upon any new ticket had been proved impracti cable. Gratified as I am at your concurrence in the Cincinnati nomina tions, certain as I am that you would not have thus concurred had you not deemed me upright and capable, I find nothing in the circumstance calculated to inflame vanity or nourish self-conceit. But that your Convention saw fit, in adopting the Cincinnati ticket, to re-affirm the Cincinnati platform, is to me a source of the profoundest satisfaction That body was constrained to take this important step by no party necessity, real or supposed. It might have accepted the candi dates of the Liberal Republicans upon grounds entirely its own, or it might have presented them (as the first Whig National Convention did Harrison and Tyler) without adopting any platform whatever. That it chose to plant itself deliberately, by a vote nearly unanimous, upon the fullest and clearest enunciation of principles which are at once incon- testably republican and emphatically democratic, gives trustworthy assurance that a new and more auspicious era is dawning upon our long distracted country. Some of the best years and best efforts of my life were devoted to a struggle against chattel slavery a struggle none the less earnest or ardu ous because respect for constitutional obligations constrained me to act for the most part on the defensive in resistence to the diffusion rather than in direct efforts for the extinction of human bondage. Throughout most of those years my vision was uncheered, my exertions were rarely animated by even so much as a hope that I should live to see my country peopled by freemen alone. The affirmance by your Convention of the Cincinnati platform is a most conclusive proof that not merely is slavery abolished, but that its spirit is extinct that despite the protests of a respectable but isolated few there remains among us no party and no formidable interest which regrets the overthrow or desires the reestablish- ment of human bondage, whether in letter or in spirit. I am thereby justified in my hope and trust that the first century of American Inde pendence will not close before the grand elemental truths on which its rightfulness was based by Jefferson and the Continenal Congress of 1776 will no longer be regarded as "glittering generalities," but will have become the universally accepted and honoured foundations of our political fabric. I demand the prompt application of those principles to our existing ACCEPTS THE BALTIMORE NOMINATION. 559 condition. Having done what I could for the complete emancipation of blacks, I now insist on the full enfranchisement of all my white cv)untry- men. Let none say that the ban has just been removed from all but a few hundred elderly gentlemen, to whom eligibility to office can be of little consequence. My view contemplates not the hundreds proscribed, but the millions who are denied the right to be ruled and represented by the men of their unfettered choice. Proscription were absurd if these did not wish to elect the very men whom they an; forbidden to choose. I have a profound regard for the people of that New England wherein I was born, in whose common schools I was taught. I rank no other peo ple above them in intelligence, capacity, and moral worth. But while they do many things well, and some admirably, there is one thing which I am sure they cannot wisely or safely undertake, and that is the selection, for States remote from and unlike their own, of the persons by whom those States shall be represented in Congress. If they could do this to good purpose then republican institutions were unfit, and aristocracy the only true political system. Yet what have we recently witnessed ? Zebulon B. Vance, the unques tionable choice of a large majority of the present Legislature of North Carolina a majority backed by a majority of the people who voted at its election refused the seat in the federal Senate to which he was fairly chosen, and the Legislature thus constrained to choose another in his stead or leave the State unrepresented for years. The votes of New England thus deprived North Carolina of the Senator of her choice, and compelled her to send another in his stead another who, in our late contest, was, like Vance, a rebel, and a fighting rebel, but who had not served in Congress before the war as Vance had, though the latter remained faithful to the Union till after the close of his term. I protest against the disfranchisement of a State presumptively, of a number of States on grounds so narrow and technical as this. The fact that the same Senate which refused Vance his seat proceeded to remove his disa bilities after that seat had been filled by another, only serves to place in stronger light the indignity to North Carolina, and the arbitrary, capri cious tyranny which dictated it. I thank you, gentlemen, that my name is to be conspicuously associated with yours in a determined effort to render amnesty complete and uni versal in spirit as well as in letter. Even defeat in such a cause would leave no sting, while triumph would rank with those victories which no blood reddens, and which evoke no tears but those of gratitude and joy. Gentlemen, your platform, which is also mine, assures me that democracy is not henceforth to stand for one thing and republicanism for another, but that those terms are to mean in politics, as they always have meant in the dictionary, substantially one and the same thing namely, equal rights, regardless of creed, or clime, or colour. I hail this as a genuine new departure from outworn feuds and meaningless contentions in the direction of progress and reform. Whether I shall be found worthy to bear the standard of the great liberal movement which the American 560 IJFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. people have inaugurated is to be determined not by words but by deeds. With me if I steadily advance, over me if I falter, its grand array moves on to achieve for our country her glorious, beneficent destiny. I remain, gentlemen, yours, HOIIACE GREELEY. To the Hon. JAMES R. DOOLITTLE, Chairman of the Convention, and Messrs. F. W. SYKES, JOHN C. MACCABE and others, Committee. If we compare Mr. Greeley s letters of acceptance of the Cincinnati and Baltimore nominations one with the other we shall find them very different both in matter and style, yet perfectly consistent with each other, and the two making an important chapter, so to speak, in the history of his life; wherein one will find as much of genuine statesmanship, political wisdom, as one will find in the writings occupying equal space of any of our country s public men, not even excepting Jefferson himself. We have seen that Mr. Greeley, in his oral reply to Mr. Doolittle and the members of the committee, invited them to visit him at his farm. The most of the committee accepted the invitation, and on this Saturday at any rate, Mr. Greeley left his axe in the wood-house, and did not chop any at all. The pic-nic took place in his woods, many of the trees of which had been planted under his own direction. It was solely a social occasion, and Mr. Greeley s short address when the party sat down to dinner was exclusively one of welcome, with some conversational remarks about his farm. There \vas no wine or spirituous liquor, but the repast, presided over by Miss Ida Greeley, was greatly enjoyed by guests who had not been accustomed to visiting Chappaqua. Here were many Southern men who had been slaveholders, others who had been general officers in the rebel "army; persons who had long regarded Mr. Greeley as their most conspicuous opponent, but who now looked upon him as their and their country s truest friend. They clasped hands in sincere and touching friend ship across the bloody chasm which had too long divided them. After refreshments were served to the invited guests, several hundred neighbours gathered in the woods, and speeches were made by Ex-Senator Gwin, Colonel Shorter, of Alabama, Gen eral Regan, of Texas, two or three other Southern gentlemen, and by Messrs. F. "W. Bird and Charles Davis, of Boston. THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION. 561 Tims joyously and in the pleasant ways of peace, was the Horace Greeley Presidential campaign inaugurated. Meantime, the canvass had been actively set in motion by the Republicans. Their National Convention assembled in the city of Philadelphia, June oth, and was largely attended. The nomination of Mr. Greeley at Cincinnati had been fol lowed by such palpable evidences of his great popularity, that the wisest Republicans saw, as has been observed, that they must use every influence in their power to stop the tide so strongly running in his favour, before its force and volume should become perfectly irresistible. One of the first things they determined upon, was to make their National Convention a great and impressive gathering. And in this they succeeded. The city was handsomely decorated with flags arid banners, the " outside attendance " was very large, all the usual appliances of great gatherings were abundantly supplied. In the mem bership of the Convention itself were many public men of general reputation: governors and ex-governors of States; members of either House of Congress and those who had been ; not a few who had been prominent officers in the Union army during the war; a number of gentlemen of the highest stand ing in trade and commerce. In campaign language it was called "The Office-Holders Convention;" and it is certain there were many office-holders among the delegates, but not more, I think, than is usually the case in national conventions of the political party in possession of the government. If we consider the character of a large proportion of the members, the services they had done the state, whether in council or in war, we shall agree that the Republican Convention of 1872 was, as to its personnel, greatly entitled to the respect of candid men. President Grant was renominated by acclamation, and Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, easily defeated Schuyler Colfax in the contest for the second place on the ticket. The platform adopted by the Convention was one of great and versatile meaningless. One will look in it in vain for any principle upon which to base a condemnation of Credit Mobilier, or an increase of Congressional salaries, ex post facto. 36 562 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEr. The real platform of the Republicans in this canvass was the history of the Republican party from 1861 to 1868. The most important portions of the proceedings in their effect upon the campaign were speeches. Whilst the Conven tion was waiting for the report of the Committee on Resolu tions, speeches were made by Senator John A. Logan, Gerrit Smith, and Senator Morton. Mr. Logan appears to have been entirely unprepared, and so embarrassed by the unexpected call as to be wholly unable to take advantage of the occasion. His failure was extremely humiliating to his friends. But Mr. Gerrit Smith made just such an address as was best calcu lated to prevent Republicans from going over to the Liberals. As for Mr. Morton, he then and there, and in a very few minutes, delivered a speech which was the Republican inspira tion of the campaign. It was the real platform of the party, as above described, in condensation. And for the whole canvass, it supplied the orators and writers of the administra tion party with better and stronger arguments than they were able to gather from all other sources. Mr. Gerrit Smith gave the Republicans heart, and Mr. Morton gave them brains. The campaign was one of great animation. With very few exceptions all who were able to do so made speeches in behalf ot the party whose cause they espoused. A few prominent Democrats declined to support Mr. Greeley, but he waa powerfully sustained by the distinguished Liberal Senators of whom I have already spoken, by General IS". P. Banks, of Massachusetts, Hon. Austin Blair, of Michigan, Ex-Governor Pierrepont, of West Virginia, Governor Palmer, of Illinois, and very many others who had long been scarcely less eminent and influential Republicans than these. He could hardly have been more heartily sustained than he was by most Democrats had he been a Democrat all his life. This was specially observable in Pennsylvania and Indiana where Governors were to be chosen at the State elections in October. In Pennsyl vania ex-Senator Buckalew was the candidate; in Indiana, ex- Senator Hendricks. They spoke and laboured for Mr. Greeley as earnestly and constantly as for their own State tickets. There was, indeed, what was called a straight Democratic THE CANVASS. 563 Convention held at Louisville early in September, which nominated Mr. Charles O Connor, of New York, for the Presidency. Those who supported this ticket were called "Bourbons," but they were far from formidable in numbers. As a rule the wise and patriotic action of the representative men of the party at the Baltimore convention was sustained by leading men and the general Democratic body politic. The Republicans had all the advantages which belong to the possession of political power and patronage. They made every possible use of their advantage herein, and also conducted the canvass with great energy and ability through public dis cussions on the rostrum and in newspapers. So great was the exigency deemed that no less than three members of President Grant s cabinet left the management of their Departments in the hands of subordinates that they might defend the admin istration against the vigorous assaults which were being made upon it. Mr. Benjamin F. Butler refused to be " bottled up " in Massachusetts, and made an oratorical pilgrimage to the West. The Republican candidate for Vice-President did enough public speaking to entitle him to forgiveness for any sins were quantity the standard by which to measure merit. The Honourable James G. Blaine, Speaker of the House of Representatives, having seen that Maine was handsomely carried as he desired, journeyed to Illinois, where he was hospitably welcomed even by those who wished that he had deferred his visit until after the election. Senator Morton laboured constantly and spoke almost daily, and with greater power and eifect than any of his Republican coadjutors, during the whole campaign. Senator Conkling was only less efficient in the East. Mr. Logan made many speeches, but, as in case of his effort at Philadelphia, they diminished rather than increased his reputation. Glee-clubs and brass bands were also used, so that the noise of the campaign was well main tained. Against the ordinary appliances of political influence, the supporters of Mr. Greeley brought appliances of at least equal influence. Their speakers, their writers were no less able, no less efficient than those of the Republican party. But they 564 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. were without patronage. It was deemed advisable, therefore, that as many legitimate and honourable means of influence as could be used should be put in exercise in behalf of the Reform candidate. Among these, it was believed, would be Mr. Greeley s personally appearing before the people in diiferent parts of the country and addressing them, in just such way as might seem to him best, whether upon political or other topics. Accordingly, early in August, Mr. Greeley visited New Eng land, making a considerable tour thereof, and being everywhere received with marked kindness and respect. Having spent a few days in Rhode Island, part of the time the guest of Senator Sprague, whom Chief Justice Chase was at this time visiting, and enjoyed a clam-bake at Silver Spring, he pro ceeded to New Hampshire, reaching Manchester, near his birthplace, in the afternoon of August 7th. Here he made a brief speech to several thousand persons, in which there was nothing said expressly of political issues. At Concord, on the next day, he was received by a large number of persons, to whose address of welcome, delivered by Mason W. Tappan, he replied briefly, but with great happiness of expression. He visited Bradford, Lancaster, Tilton, and several other places in his native State, his journeys in which were a constant ovation. At every stoppage of the train, he would find large numbers desirous of seeing him, and anxious to hear him speak. For all he had kindly words, and in every instance where he spoke at all said something which was peculiarly appropriate to the time, place, and circumstance. From New Hampshire he proceeded to Maine, and at Port land delivered his first distinctively political speech, on the 14th, to a large assemblage. Thence he went by rail to Augusta, and returned by Portsmouth to Rye Beach, New Hampshire, whence he proceeded home by way of Boston, stopping there only a short time. He was compelled to address the people from the cars at several places between Boston and New- York. He arrived home on the afternoon of the 18th. During this tour, brief though it was, Mr. Greeley had spoken very many times and upon nearly every occasion in an AT CINCINNATI. 565 entirely impromptu manner. These short addresses, as most of them were, not only gave evidence of Mr. Greeley s kindly feelings, but of wonderful intellectual versatility, and of sagacity. There was scarcely one in which there was not something of food for reflection; something which showed that here was a person who was by nature and habit both a philanthropist and a statesman. On the evening of September 16th, Mr. Greeley delivered an address at the Exposition then being held in the city of Newark, New Jersey. A noteworthy passage thereof is the following: By means of the telegraph the world is becoming one commonwealth. What is known in one land is known almost simultaneously in all others, and the interests, aspirations, and conceptions of the people of all coun tries are becoming closely interwoven. About twenty-one years ago I groped my way up a dark stairs in Fulton street, New-York, to see a sew ing machine. Elias Howe, Jr., the inventor, sat there, wild and seedy- looking, frightened at the approach of a stranger. He thought I had come to steal his idea from him. When I told him I had not come to take his sewing machine, but to tell the people there was a sewing machine, lie became communicative, and told me what he had hoped from his wonder ful combination of the needle and the shuttle. Now, there are a million sewing machines in use, and six immense factories are busy turning out more to meet the demand. I believe that as we improve in our lightening of human labour by deputing the heaviest muscular work to that faithful servant, steam, that we will also improve the conditions of wages for labour ; that the system of weekly pay now in vogue will give way to even a better system, where the labourer will have a personal and direct interest, not only in the quantity but the quality of his work, and that he will have a co-operative interest in the work which capital now commands. Thus labour and capital will be brought gradually and quietty into better and nobler accord. But on the day before this he had accepted an invitation from a Committee of the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, agreeing to visit that city in the course of a few days. On the journey thither he stopped for a short time at Pittsburgh, and there delivered an animated speech to a large concourse of people. At Cincinnati, he was received with magnificent hos pitality as the guest of the city and a distinguished visitor of the Exposition. Here, he delivered not less than four public addresses, each remarkable in its way: First, a response to 566 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. the address of welcome; second, an address at the Exposition; third, a political speech to a vast crowd of people; and, fourth, a speech before the Chamber of Commerce. From Cincin nati, he proceeded to Louisville, where his reception was similarly hospitable, and his public utterances likewise note worthy exhibitions of his great and varied wisdom and the capacity to bring it to bear with force and clearness, and with most appropriate reference to immediate surroundings. Spend ing Sunday in Louisville, the guest of Mr. Watterson of The Courier-Journal, he went thence by Jeifersonville, Columbus, and Franklin, speaking at each of these places to large crowds, to Indianapolis, the capital of "the Hoosier State," where he addressed an assemblage claimed by The Sentinel newspaper as the largest ever known in Indiana. It was, indeed, a most exciting occasion. The State was known to be close. It was the home of Senator Morton, at once the best thinker and the greatest organizer in the Republican party. His reelection to the Senate depended upon the result of the October election. Thomas A. Hendricks, who occupied a place in the Democratic party similar to that of Morton among the Republicans, was the candidate for Governor on the Liberal- Democratic ticket. The campaign in the State had been one of exceeding excitement throughout. It had all the while " thundered all around the skies." The excitement was at white heat when Mr. Greeley reached the State. His presence at the Capital brought thither large numbers of people from even distant parts of the common wealth, while from Indianapolis and the region round about for many miles the public literally poured out en masse. Mr. Greeley was introduced to the vast audience, by the Honour able Daniel W. Voorhees, who said: MY FELLOW CITIZENS: To me has been assigned the honour of intro ducing to you the distinguished guest of the evening. He comes to you as the exponent of a great movement in American politics. When that movement commenced it is well known that I did not favour it. I sub mitted, however, to the lawfully expressed authority of my party and moved onward with my friends. This movement now, with its chosen leader, receives from me far more than mere submission to the dictates of party. I am now thoroughly impressed with the conviction that the cause AT INDIANAPOLIS. 567 in which we are engaged is the cause of good government, the cause of reconciliation, and of purification. The public utterances of Mr. Greeley in his letters, and in his speeches, lift him up to the highest plane of states manship. I hazard nothing in saying that for elevation of thought, for purity of sentiment, for broad philanthropy, for general benevolence, and for Christian statesmanship, the speeches of Mr. Greeley, delivered in his present western tour, have no parallel in American history, and but few in the better portions of the history of the ancients. Had I never been for him before, I would be for him to-night. [Applause.] I embrace this movement with all my heart, mind, and strength. Its tendency is the redemption and happiness of the whole country. It means peace, restoration, kindness, confidence, and equality amongst our people of all sections. I see here many thousands of people. Tnis is a bright omen. They appreciate and understand the issues. There are many labouring people here. I propose to introduce a man of their own kind. I now introduce to you one, who, by the industry of his brain xnd hand has achieved a foremost position, not only in the history of the American Republic, but also in the history of mankind Horace Greeley, f New York. [Applause.] Mr. Greeley s speech was reported as follows: PEOPLE OF INDIANA: The distinguished gentleman who has just addressed you has pronounced the two watch-words of the present can vass. The first is reconciliation, and the second is purification. I have spoken heretofore on reconciliation. I propose to speak, to-night, in the interest of purification. Our country has recently encountered and van quished the peril of disunion. She is to-day confronted with the deadly peril of corruption, the cancer which is eating her vitals, whereof the essence is purchased legislation, bribed public servants, and servile betray als of the highest trusts. These are the elements. Let me endeavour to illustrate her present peril by simply recounting to you statements beyond denial and undeniable facts, which illustrate the history of legislation by Congress with reference to the Union Pacific Railway. I would fix your attention on this as a sample of the means whereby scheming, selfish, avaricious men contrive to glut their own greed while they talk of public interest and public beneficence. Ten years ago Congress passed an act chartering the Union Pacific Railway. That act was intended and calcu lated to secure connection by railway of our Pacific with our Atlantic States. A noble purpose, and one which cannot but be strongly com mended, as it was. Certain that private capital would not build a road through 2,000 miles of mountain and desert, Congress resolved to aid that enterprise generously. In the first place the right of way through the public lands was granted, with the right also to take materials from any part of the public domain. Next, a large grant was made in aid of the Pacific Railroad, and bonds of the Government to the extent of over $25,000 per mile were loaned to the company in aid of this project, and the 568 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. first mortgage on the railroad taken therefor. It was thus provided that the road should be built with public money for the public. After a few years this project, having passed into the hands of capable, grasping men, some of whom were members of Congress, a new step was taken. Congress was in duced to authorize a new loan in aid of this project, and an equal amount of the Government aid, that is, to the extent of at least $25,000 per mile was sought, and this new loan was authorized to take precedence of the Gov ernment loan. In other words, Congress relinquished our first mortgage on the road and took a second mortgage, authorizing the Company to make a first mortgage of equal amount ahead of ours. Now, then, our security was destroyed by this, so that our investment was to be of no avail. In a little while a private company was somewhere chartered, entitled the Credit Mobilier of America, and that private company or ring was composed of a number of active members of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, some of them members of Congress. No list of the stockholders of this Credit Mobilier was ever published, or can be obtained. But these gentle men proceeded to make contracts virtually with themselves. That is to say, the same gentlemen officiating as officers of the Union Pacific Rail road contracted with themselves as officers of the Credit Mobilier of America to construct the Union Pacific Railroad at enormous prices which absorbed both the bonds loaned by the Government and the private loan of the Company. In other words, these gentlemen contracted with them selves to pay themselves twice the fair cost of entirely building and equipping the road, and after building the road with the proceeds of the money loaned by the Government, they proceeded to divide among them selves the other bonds, equal to the amount which Congress had made mortgage on the entire road. By these means twenty or thirty millions of dollars were divided among the parties, and after all that money was so divided and they were called upon to pay, they divided the bonds and built the road with the Government bonds, which were a second mortgage on that Company. Now, you see these same gentlemen who engineered through Congress this project of making the road cost double what it should cost, and making half the cost a dividend appropriated among themselves, these gentlemen now appear before Congress for additional advantages. Congress had thus far reserved to the country such sums as this railroad earned b} carrying the mail and the provisions, &c., for the army of the United States. But this Company said No. They said: We want you to reserve half the money we earn and pay over half the money to us. Consequently, in March, 1871, by an amendment fastened upon an Army Appropriation bill, the Secretary of the Treasury was instructed to pay over to these companies half the money they earned by carrying the mails and armies, and only reserving half those earnings towards the pay ment of the interest semi-yearly, accruing on the bonds. Legislators and corporators corruptly used their legislative power to fasten this corrupt debt upon the people of the United States. [Applause.] Now, then, I stand here, fellow-citizens, to insist that the legislation of your country, National and State, .needs purification, and that the leading men in our SPEECH AT INDIANAPOLIS. 569 Government, the men who are speakers and members of the Committee on Pacific Railway, and other railways, that these men should be called to justice. [Applause.] We need reconstruction. We need purification, and this is proved by the letters of Oakes Ames, the undenied and undeni able letters of a member of Congress, corporator, and a large stockholder in the Union Pacific Railroad, of which he was lately President. These letters incontestibly prove corruption, and corruption in Irish places. This day the people of this country are paying some millions per annum out of their hard earnings for interest on these bonds loaned to the Pacific road, paying this money as interest to meet the vast sum divided by these gentlemen among themselves as the dividends of the Credit Mobilier of America. Now, gentlemen, I do not say what individuals have received this money, but I do say by corrupt legislation in the way of individual gains, thirty or forty millions of dollars have been saddled on this coun try, an unjust and unrighteous debt. [Applause.] AVe are called upon to pay the interest now every six months, and after thirty years we must pay the principal, and all this, because, as I have briefly exposed to you, this could not have been accomplished, could not have been effected, with out the connivance and support of men high in authority. These facts assure you that purification is urgently needed. Fellow-citizens: Let me say one word for Reconciliation. For years I have pleaded, for years I have implored, that strife and contention should cease. For years I have said, let us have universal amnesty and impartial suffrage. [Great applause.] We have achieved impartial suffrage. No man contests, no man disputes it. Now give us universal amnesty. We ought to have it. [Great applause.] It is time that alienation should cease. It is time that the bitterness and hatred engendered by the late contest should cease. It is time that the American people, the whole of them, should be asked again to assume the right of power over our com mon nationality no autocrats, no aliens, no proscribed class and then, united once more in taking the vows of allegiance, the honour, the unity, and the prosperity of this great Republic will be assured. [Great applause.] I plead for reconciliation, perfect and complete. I stand for amnesty; so thorough that no man be left outside of its circle. I desire to see every American recalled to loyalty by being asked to stand equally with us on a common platform of American nationality. [Applause.] Fellow-citizens: We were promised this reform four years ago in the Republican National platform. It has not been conceded to us. We must take it. We have asked for it long enough. Now the people say we will have it. [Applause.] In several States, in Virginia, in Missouri, in West Virginia, the people have been asked, Will you have every man enfran chised; no man proscribed? and they have always answered "Yes, yes." No proscription; universal amnesty. The whole people will so answer if the question can be fairly presented. I have put the question. I represen- the affirmative of that question. I call on the people so to vote that no man shall doubt that the American people demand universal amnesty, and 570 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. the restoration of every withheld right to every American born or natu ralized on our soil. [Applause.] People of Indiana: I know your generous hearts are with me. I believe that your votes will testify that your hearts are sound and true. I know you cannot be bullied, and I feel that when your verdict shall be ren dered, it will thrill the heart of the friends of Reconciliation from one end of the country to the other. [Applause.] I know you, and trust you. Your hearts beat responsive to mine. Make it sure that there shall be no ambiguity in your verdict, and permit nothing to impair the complete ness of your triumph. [Long and deafening applause.] I have given this full account of the meeting at Indian apolis, not because Mr. Greeley s speech there was any better or greater than others made on this remarkable tour, so cor rectly described by Mr. Yoorhees in his introductory speech, but because it may serve as a fair specimen of his political speeches at this time, and because of its treatment of a subject which brought upon him the special hostile criticism of Re publicans. Developments made subsequently to Mr. Greeley s death not only justified his statements made at Indianapolis, but led many to believe that if the public had not been induced to discredit his asseverations, he, and not General Grant, would have been elected President. Whether this belief be correct or not, it has already been placed beyond all dispute that the corruption which he denounced was most shameful to many public men and brought disgrace to the republic; that the purification he demanded w r as, and is, a demand of true states manship and even of national preservation. From Indianapolis Mr. Greeley proceeded homeward, making many speeches on the way, in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylva nia. He reached New- York late in the afternoon of Septem ber 28th. Quite a number of the speeches made by Mr. Greeley on this tour will be found in the Appendix to this volume. I suppose there will be none, whose judgment is entitled to respect, who will question the statement that these speeches demonstrated the statesmanship, the practical wisdom, the versatile genius of Mr. Greeley in the most remarkable manner. There was not a question of public interest which he did not discuss; upon which he did not throw some new light; to which he did DEATH OF MRS. GKEELEY. 571 not add some novel idea or expression. For every audience he had something new to say; not once throughout the whole tour did he repeat himself. Not Abraham Lincoln, in his famous debates with Judge Douglas, exhibited so great, or so great variety of intellectual resource. Whatever there is of real value in oratory, Horace Greeley exhibited on this tour; and it is the simple truth to say that no American, however distinguished for eloquence, ever uttered half so much that was true, or statesmanlike, or profound, in the same time. Mr. Voorhees was perfectly truthful when he said, " that for elevation of thought, for purity of sentiment, for broad phi lanthropy, for general benevolence, and for Christian states manship, the speeches of Mr. Greeley, delivered in his present Western tour, have no parallel in American history." And to all this President Grant replied with a masterly silence. After his return, Mr. Greeley visited Baltimore, and deliv ered a number of agricultural and political addresses at dif ferent places, but he had only been at home about a fortnight when Mrs. Greeley, who had long been an invalid, was taken suddenly and alarmingly ill. Devoting his entire attention to her, watching by her bedside almost constantly, both day and night, he was compelled, of course, to decline all calls for his appearance in public, or even to see his friends. Mrs. Greeley expired on the morning of October 30th, at the house of Mr. Greeley s friend, Mr. Alvin J.Johnson, in the city. Two days afterwards her remains were taken to Greenwood, the funeral ceremonies having been performed at Mr. Chapin s church. By the death of his wife Mr. Greeley was inexpressibly afflicted. He had not seemed to be greatly discouraged by the October elections. Pennsylvania and Ohio had gone against his friends, but by small majorities, while Mr. Hendricks had been elected in Indiana. Notwithstanding such result, he yet expressed hopes of the triumph of Reform, and appeared constantly cheerful to all his friends. Perhaps this cheerfulness was assumed, as a duty to the cause he represented. It is probable that such is the fact. It was a prompting of his great nature 572 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. that he should show no personal disappointment in defeat. The October elections clearly indicated, however, the defeat of the Reform party in the quickly following November election. Of the thirty-seven States, President Grant carried thirty-one, Mr. Greeley six, but the latter received nearly three million popular votes (2,834,079), being considerably more than Mr. Seymour had received in 1S68, and enough to let the Repub licans know they must themselves inaugurate the reforms de manded by the Cincinnati and Baltimore Conventions or soon relinquish the control of public affairs. Soon after the election, Caleb Lyon, of Lyonsdale, poet and politician, met Mr. Greeley on Broadway, and, after the usual salutations, said, " Well, Mr. Greeley, how do you yourself account for the result of the election?" " Let us go get a lunch," said Mr. Greeley, " and I will tell you." They went together to a restaurant near by, and, having ordered lunch, Mr. Greeley said : " Well, Governor, I will tell you how I came to be defeated. The facts are plain. I was an abolitionist for years, when it was as much as one s life was worth even here in !S T ew-York, to be an abolitionist; and the negroes have all voted against me. Whatever of talents and energy I have possessed I have freely contributed all my life long to Protection; to the cause of our manufactures. And the manufacturers have expended millions to defeat me. I even made myself ridiculous in the opinion of many whose good wishes I desired by showing fair play and giving a fair iield in The Tribune to AVoman s Rights; and the women have all gone against me !" During a call which Governor Lyon made upon Senator Sumner early in 1873, one of the most noted of the advocates of Woman s Rights also called, when the Governor related to her this incident. It was replied to in a spirit of heartless insolence altogether beyond the capacity of a gentleman. The main causes of Mr. Greeley s defeat may, perhaps, be found in the strength of party associations; the consolidation of the money power against him; the defection of many free traders among Republicans; the refusal of many Democrats to AT WORK ON THE TKIBUKE. i> o sustain liim notwithstanding the admirable action of their Convention; the immense patronage of the government, freely used in the interest of President Grant. The latter received a less number of votes in several States than he had received four years before. Had the election occurred in July, or the early part of August, Mr. Greeley would probably have been elected. The greatness of his popularity had by this time become so manifest, that Republican managers saw that every possible means must be used to avert discomfiture. Their desperation gave them a temporary strength which secured a victory, but then only upon solemn pledges on the part of their representative men and journals in behalf of the reforms de manded by Mr. Greeley. In the moment of defeat, there were those who said that if Mr. Adams, or Mr. Trumbull, or Judge Davis, had been nominated, he would have beaten President Grant. This opinion was probably incorrect. Mr. Adams or Mr. Trumbull would have divided the support of the money power with President Grant; Judge Davis would have received more Democratic votes than Mr. Greeley; but it may reasonably be claimed that neither could have secured as great a popular endorsement as the chosen candidate. Certainly not one of those eminent gentlemen could have done himself more honour O or by his own labours given the liberal cause more strength during the canvass than did Horace Greeley. The election over, Mr. Greeley returned to his old editorial room and cheerfully resumed work upon The Tribune with his accustomed vigour and versatility. It appeared as though he had many years of strong life before him; years in which, in this unpretending sanctum, he could accomplish more for his country and mankind than might have been possible, had he been transferred to the Executive Mansion and lived to occupy it. CHAPTEE XXX. LAST ILLNESS, DEATH, AND FUNERAL. Mr. Greeley Suddenly Prostrated by Alarming Illness The Public Inter est in the State of His Ailment His Death from Disease of the Brain Circumstances Attending his Last Hours The Causes of his Death Manifold Work, the Criterion of Age His Funeral Attended by the President and Members of the Cabinet, the Vice-President, and Many Eminent Men Funeral Sermons by Mr. Chapin and Henry Ward Beecher The Procession to the Grave A City in Mourning Requiescat. MB. GREELEY wrote, however, for The Tribune only a short time after the election. His constant nursing, night and day. of Mrs. Greeley, immediately following a long period of great intellectual labour, accompanied by the wearing physical fatigue of travel, produced an ailment of the brain, the first manifestation of which was a distressing sleeplessness. He rapidly became worse, and the country, before it had recovered from the excitement of the political campaign in which he had borne the most prominent part, was shocked by the intel ligence that he was prostrated by alarming illness which might at any moment prove fatal. Sleeplessness was followed by inflammation of the brain, which would yield to no medical treatment, but rapidly grow ing worse, soon produced delirium. Mr. Greeley s condition was telegraphed over the country daily by the Associated Press, and many special correspondents were instructed to particularly inquire and report upon the subject. The public interest in his situation was universal. It was manifested among all classes of men, in all walks of life. For several days Mr. Greeley suffered greatly, and his disease was fre quently manifested in the most painful manner. The delirium resulting from the inflammation of the organ assailed was excessive, as is always the case in such disease with large and (574) HIS DEATH. 575 active brains. Their capacity of disease, of delirium, appears to be proportionate to their capacity of labour. So it was with Mr. Greeley s cotemporary, Dr. Charles H. Eay, of Chicago, who died of inflammation of the brain only about two years before Mr. Greeley, and with similar painful and extraordinary manifestations of delirium. The sick man had every attention which medical skill, the most unselfish friendship, the devoted love of daughters could supply. But skill, friendship, love availed not to resist the approach of the king of terrors. After some hours of calm and serene rest, with his faculties restored to their natural power and clearness, he said, "I know that my Eedecmer liveth," and his soul peacefully left its earthly tenement on Friday, November 29th. His death was like his life. The wild strife of his own dis ordered faculties raged like the conflicts of his long career, continuing his almost fierce unrest. He was assailed by mobs; he was encompassed by relentless enemies; he was misrepre sented and maligned by his own countrymen whom he was faithfully labouring to serve. In the wild tumult of his dis ease, years were crowded into moments, with the effect of the most grotesque delirium. But he passed triumphantly even through this awful ordeal. Before the final effort of his mind the storms which threatened to engulf it passed away, so that, as was most befitting to his life and character, calmly, and with mind unclouded, Horace Greeley sought the bosom of his Father and his God. The causes of Mr. Greeley s death were manifold. Those who suppose that personal disappointment at the result of the election had much to do with it, palpably err. Whether he were elected or whether he were defeated probably made less difference to him than to almost any of his supporters. He constantly regarded himself as nothing, the cause as every thing. Whatsoever there was, therefore, of disappointment, whatsoever there was in the election that brought grief to him, did not belong to disappointed ambition, but to his earnest, profound concern for the welfare of the people and the peace and prosperity of his country. 576 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. One of the last letters lie ever wrote, perhaps the very last, was as follows: NEW- YORK, November 10, 1872. DEAR SIR: I have yours of the 6th inst. My misfortunes do not " coine single files but in battalions." I grieve that you are also a sufferer by our disastrous canvass. I cannot say that I see any light ahead. Yours, sadly, HORACE GREELEY. C. A. HAVILAND, Esq., Chicago, Illinois. That he could see no light ahead for his country s thorough pacification, and the purification of its government filled him with a profound and poignant sorrow, no doubt. The same sorrow would have agitated him in the same degree, had Mr. Adams, or Mr. Trumbull, or Judge Davis been the defeated candidate instead of himself. If there were in his sadness a personal sorrow, it was that the coloured people, for whom he had done and dared so much, had utterly failed to recognize his labours in their behalf; that the people, generally, of whom he was so true a representative man, had failed to stand at once by themselves and the Republic s good. And if this were so, it was the sorrow, not of a disappointed man, but of a philanthropist and patriot. The deeper such sorrow was, the more honourable was it to his character. And if such was one of the causes of his death, let it nevermore be said that he did not die for his country as truly and greatly as he had lived for it. Mr. Greeley, during the canvass, had been compelled, by circumstances, to submit to over- work. From this he would have speedily recuperated, perhaps, if he could have had subsequent rest. This, the illness of his wife, and his devoted affection for her, prevented. Under these, and more strains upon it, bis physical nature gave way. Nor should we fail to consider that work, not years, is the true criterion of a man s age. Judged by this standard, no one ever lived longer than Horace Greeley, because no greater worker ever lived. That which he wrote, and which exerted less or more influence upon his countrymen and mankind, would, if printed in volumes like Bancroft s History of the United States, make a large library. Bus extemporaneous political addresses, THE BODY LYING IN STATE. 577 had they all been reported, would make several volumes, and every one would contain much of originality and many reflections of permanent value. His addresses before agricul tural societies, clubs of different kinds, would make several more volumes. Before the immense quantity of Horace Gree- ley s writings of permanent value, even the long unparalleled works of Lope de Vega pale their ineffectual fires. Counting his years by work, Mr. Greeley lived much longer than Methuselah. Though the causes of his death were, as we have seen, manifold, he died, therefore, of old age. The machinery by which his mind worked had become worn out through great and constant use. The body of Mr. Greeley was conveyed to the City Hall where it lay in state in the Governor s Boom. The remains were visited by many thousand persons; by newsboys in large numbers, who for once put aside their forwardness and wept at sight of all that was left of one they knew had been their friend; by workingmen of every trade; by the most eminent of the citizens of ]STew-York. The lowest and the highest and all intervening classes paid deferential respect to the remains of him who had been the friend of all mankind. A thousand instances of touching affection were given by those who had never personally known Mr. Greeley. Those who had known him in life did not attempt to conceal their ungovernable emotions of sorrow. From the City Hall, Mr. Greeley s body was removed to the residence of Mr. Samuel Sinclair, publisher of The Tribune, who was one of the family mourners. And Gtill the affections of the people continued to be manifested. Hundreds upon hundreds brought flowers to rest upon the coffin; large num bers continued to come to look for the last time upon the face of the great journalist. Mr. Sinclair s house was not large enough to contain the flowers which affection brought to place upon the bier of Horace Greeley. The funeral took place upon Wednesday, December 4th. Before ten o clock, the friends and associates of the late Editor began to gather at Mr. Sinclair s residence, on West Forty- fifth street. Thence the body was removed to the church of 37 578 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. the Divine Paternity (that of Beverend E. H. Chapin, D. D.), where the funeral ceremonies were performed, and whence the procession moved to the cemetery. The pall-bearers took charge of the remains at Mr. Sinclair s house. These were: O Chief Justice Chase, Mr. William M. Evarts, Senators Trum- bull and Fenton, Mr. Thurlow Weed, Mr. John E. Williams, Mr. Ivory Chamberlin, Mr. Erastus Brooks, Rev. Dr. Bright, Mr. Sinclair Tousey, Mr. William Orton, Mr. R M. Hoe, Mr. D. W. Bruce, Mr. P. C. Baker, Mr. Pvobert Bonner, Mr. J. G-. Lightbody, Mr. Dudley S. Gregory, Mr. Charles S. Storrs, Mr. A. J. Johnson, and Mr. John K. Stuart. Following these were the family and particular friends, and next the newspaper fra ternity, very largely represented. All the employes of the different departments of The Tribune in the city were present, with large numbers from other journals and press associations. Dr. Chapin s church would not contain a tithe of the persons who desired admission. As the coffin was carried up the aisle and deposited in front of the pulpit, a solemn voluntary pealed from the organ, and the people who for an hour had filled every inch of space except the reserved seats, reverently rose to their feet. Upon the south of the pulpit was the President of the United States. Near by were the Yice-Presi dent and the Vice-President-elect. The Secretary of War sat near the President s right, and near him was the Honourable Elihu B. Washburne, Minister to France, at this time visiting the United States. Senator Schurz and Mr. Manton Marble, of The World, sat together in a front pew. Senator Conk- ling was present. Governor Hoffman and staff, the Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut sat south of the pulpit. Mayor Hall, of New -York, the mayors of several neighbouring cities formed part of the remarkable assemblage. During his last illness, Mr. Greeley had spoken with great admiration and kindness of two remarkable women he had known Margaret Fuller, and Clara Louise Kellogg. Suddenly the stillness which had followed the mournful music of the organ was lovingly disturbed by a sweet, ringing voice, singing with indescribable beauty and power and tendernes " I Know that my Redeemer Liveth." Every eye moistened and every MR. BEECHER S SERMON. 579 heart beat quick at this touching exhibition of Miss Kellogg s affectionate offering to her great friend, there lying dead. The n rst sermon was preached by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, who said: There is no one that dies whose death is not momentous, if we but behold it as God s angels do; and yet when men have filled the household with their presence, and society has been made a beneficiary by their kindnesses and by their wisdom, death becomes still more momentous. Every day hundreds and hundreds are borne through your streets and laid away to sleep in yonder Greenwood, leaving behind them sorrow and tears, and many reverent thoughts ; and yet of all that have passed through on their way to their long home, no one, I think, has gone, or for a long time will go, bearing with him so many sympathies, so much kindness, so many tender recollections, so much that should be instructive, as he who lies here before us. Who is this man, bearing upon him all the civic honours that the land could give ? Who is this man ? One whose wealth has made him a prince in benevolence? He was not rich in living, nor in dying rich. Who is this man V Some one gifted with all kindness of heart and singular tact of administration that should make every one his friend who came near him? But he was a man of war, who for thirty years has filled the land with the racket of various controversies, and yet to-day, without office, without title, without place except that of the humblest citizen, the Gov ernment itself stands still, and the honoured representative and Chief Magistrate of this great people is here to bow his head in unfeigned sym pathy. Here are heads also of Departments, and men of every style of thought; here are men who have scarcely yet laid down the bow from which the last arrow has been shot all gathered to-day by one impulse the business of the street almost stopped; private dwellings showing the significant tokens of their sorrow all gathered in genuine sympathy around about this man who can speak no more, walk in our presence no more, but lias gone out from us forever. Is it that death has made us forget all our differences ? We have not forgotten them. Is it that strained courtesy that lays aside criticism in the presence of death as something too august for man to trifle with ? But we differ to-day as much in theory, as much in philosophy, in the best methods of policy, as we did a month ago. A month ago the whole land was full of clamour. A little while ago men were in fieree battle. There has been no change in it; and yet he who was the chief mark on one side lies before you ; and you press around him in tears to-day to do him reverence. It is because the man is more than a professional man; not the candidate, not the editor. The man that lay under them all, is honoured and honourable. And when the conflicts of life intermit for a moment, and you can take off your harness, and look into that which belongs to your essential manhood, you do revere him and love him. And 580 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. since the circumstances of his going were so wonderfully dramatic, since stroke after stroke resounded through the land to make his death one which in every feature is calculated most deeply to affect all, you are brought together to express here your honour and your reverence for Horace Greeley. It is given to but very few men, the Divine Jesus chiefly, and in lesser measure to Plato, so to think that their thoughts go on as institutions, working down through the generations. Such men are the masters or men and the masters of minds, and they are but few. Most men are great by their circumstances, and great by the exertion of powers which have an application by reason of transient circumstances; there are others who are great because they have fertile lives, and it is permitted them to mingle their lives with the lives of others. This has been done by him who can write no more and speak no more. For thirty years he has builded for himself no outward monument, no long line of literary efforts, no man sion, no estate; but for thirty years that heart that meant well by every human being has been beating, beating, and giving some drops of its blood to countless multitudes, until to-day, between the two oceans, there is hardly an intelligent man or child that does not feel the influence of the life of Horace Greeley. He is lost to his individuality, but his work is as great as the character and the currents and the tendencies of this great American people. And now what matters it, in your present thought, that in political economy he was on one side and you were on the other; that in the party divisions of life he was on one side and you were on the other ? That which at this hour beseems you, and that which is in accordance with every man s feelings to-day, is this: Horace Greeley gave the strength of his life to education, to honest industry, to humanity, especially toward the poor and the unfriended. He was feet for the lame; he was tongue for the dumb ; he was an eye for the blind, and had a heart for those who had none to sympathize with them. His nature longed for more love than it had, and more sympathy than was ever administered to it. The great heart working through life fell at last. He has poured his life out for thirty years into the life of his time. It has been for intelligence, for industry, for an honester life and a nobler manhood; and, though he may not be remembered by those memorials which carry other men s names down, his deeds will be known and felt to the latest generations in our land. The husbandman reaps his wheat and it is threshed, and the straw goes back again to the ground, and the chaff. It matters not how much or how little wheat is garnered. Even that perishes. Some of it goes to seed again and into the ground; more of it becomes the farmer himself. He holds the plow with his hand ; he gathers in again other harvests with his skill; it becomes the man. It is no longer wheat; it is the man. The harvest has been garnered, and it reappears in the schoolboy, the pioneer settler in the distant West, in the young, thriving men of our cities and towns. To these men Horace Greeley s life has gone out. He ME. CHAPIN S SERMON. 581 has been a national benefactor, and to-day we bear testimony to these under virtues which made his life conspicuous. We were attracted so much to the politics of the time that we gave no notice to those nobler under qualities of true manhood in him; but to-day we think better. To-day we are all speaking kindly of him sorrowfully. To-day we are asking what things there may be said of him, and what we may add to praise him fairly and justly. Oh! men, is there nothing for you to do you who with uplifted hands a few short weeks ago were doing such battle? Look at what you were then, and what you are now. Are there no lessons to be learned, no cor rections to be made? Think of those conflicts, in which you forgot charity, kindliness, goodness! Think of those fierce battles, almost unto blood in just such you have mingled, out of just such you have come. What do you think of them now ? Look here at all that remains of this man. Did you not magnify the differences ? Did you not give yourselves to your malign passions, and too little to justice and divine charity? As you stand to-day it is not enough that you should mourn with those that mourn. It is wise that you should carry back with you a tempered, and kinder and chastened feeling. At last, at last ! he rests as one that has been driven through a long voyage by storms that would not abate, but reaches the shore, and stands upon the firm earth ; sees again the shady trees and the green fields, and the beaming sun. So he, through a long and not untempestuous voyage, has reached the shore and is at rest. Oh ! how sweet the way that leads to the grave, when that grave is God s golden gate to immortality! How blessed are the dead that die in the Lord! God grant that, in the solemn ity of these thoughts in which we have gathered together to-day, it may be ours so to live that when we die angels shall open the gate and receive us into the joy and glory of our Lord. Dr. Chapin, Mr. Greeley s own pastor for many years, followed, saying: One month ago many of us now present met in this place to express our sympathy with one who sat, with pallid face and quivering lips, a heart- stricken mourner for his wife. To-day, as in the freshness of his great sorrow he himself wished, he is to lie by her side. The shadow of death through which he was then passing has enfolded him utterly. Such is the providence that checks all human purposes and makes life a continual surprise. And now, as I stand here to discharge no mere professional function, to do that which I feel is no more imperative forme as a pastor than as a personal friend, I still must beg leave to limit myself closely to the offices of the hour. I cannot attempt here and now to unfold the life or estimate the worth of Horace Greeley. Such an attempt on one hand would be premature, and on the other hand is unnecessary. Premature, because the traits and lessons of a great life can best be summed and fixed in history in calmer moments, when the first vibrations of grief and excite- 582 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. ment have ceased. This work ought to be done, and I trust will be done in the utterances of some public memorial service which will deserve and receive a much wider hearing than I can claim. On the other hand, this work of appreciation is unnecessary. It has already been done. There have been but few instances in our history when the salient points of a man s character have been so instinctively apprehended. But very few instances when the expressions of regret and regard have been so sponta neous, so wide-spread, and so similar. The record of Mr. Greeley s life, like his person, was known everywhere. These eulogies that pour in so thick and fast from every quarter of the land are not made up with arti ficial rhetoric. They are genuine. Those tears as freely shed to-day by country firesides and in distant States as under the shadowing drapery o f these walls are not conventional tears. They are no official symbols of mourning that hang around us ; they represent the people s thought and are twined about the people s heart. A career of honest purpose and beneficent tendencies vindicates itself under all transient misconception. Where to-day are our party badges and political distinctions? They coil to ashes. Where in the reverent sadness of this hour are differences of creed ? They melt away in the broad light of Christian recognition that testifies to a true man s life and arches over a good man s grave. All this, then, I say, indicates an instructive appreciation of character that could not be made more distinct by any laboured analysis. And now, my friends, as one lesson adapted to this place and this hour, I ask you before the face of the dead to consider for a moment or two what it was to which this affectionate remembrance attaches, and which draws this spontaneous regard. It was not mere intellectual ability, large and undeniable as it was in the present instance. It was not official station ; Mr. Greeley held no official station. The will of the people, expressed through its Electoral College to-day, decreed that he should hold no such station. To-day the will of God elects him to a place from which all human honours look small and dim. !STo, my friends, the attraction in this instance is the mag netism of simple goodness. I need not say that Mr. Greeley s heart was as large as his brain that love for humanity was an inwrought element of his nature. This was so complete, so broad in him that it touched all sides of humanity, so to speak. It was manifested in a kindness and regard that kept their silent record-in many private hearts; in a hand ever open and ready to help; in one of the kindest faces ever worn by man, the expression of which was " a meeting of gentle lights without a name." The hundreds of poor toil-worn men who yesterday passed through the crowd to take a last look at that worn countenance were moved by no idle curiosity. They came there not to gaze at the face of the great journalist and the famous politician. They were drawn by the conviction that he was the poor man s friend, the sympathetic champion of working-men, who had struggled through their experiences and never forgotten their claims. Mr. Greeley s public action was directed to the same impulse. It was the motive power of his entire efforts, his almost unprecedented work for so many years and in so many ways. It enlisted him in the service MR. CHAPIN S SERMON. 583 of every humane cause; not only did it inspire his life-long war with oppression and vice and meanness of every sort it made him exception ally generous and tolerant. Some may think that he erred on the side of mercy against justice. Perhaps so; but if one must err at all, that is a good side to err on. A sweet disposition may hold even an error in harm less solution, -while there is a precision that is as sour as it is sound. But let it be remembered that often mercy is the synonyme of justice. Another danger attendant upon such a spirit is credulity too much readiness to believe the most and to believe the best. But this human nature of ours, which, discipline it as we may, will still be fallible, is full as likely to be wise at this extreme as at the other. Truth is better than fiction ; never theless if the disparaging estimate of humanity is the true one, then fiction is better than fact. The doctrine of a trust in man however qualified by painful experiences is necessary as the inspiration to all noble effort and for any content of mind, for the working machinery of life, and for every fibre of the social organism. Do you tell us that there is no substance in human virtue ? That all honesty is marketable and all love a selfish mask ? That in this world there are no loyal friendships, no unpurchased benefits, no faithful hearts, no incorruptible souls? Is all this sentimental illusion ? Then, I say, let us be cheated by this illusion always, shutting out minor truths and deceiving us even to the grave. Whatever may have been the mistake of him who is dead before us, there was no mistake in the main current of that principle which inspired his labours and characterized his life. And here, I repeat, is a lesson for us all. In trying to do the work of life we may be discouraged by instances of conspicuous greatness at least greatness that expresses intellectual power and achieves splendid success. It ma}* seem to us that because we cannot do great things we can do nothing that is of worth, and that it matters little what we do. But goodness is richer than greatness. It lifts us nearer to God than any intel lectual elevator, and moreover it is accessible for the humblest life. I do not say that all duty, that all religion, is expressed in love for man; though we have ample warrant for belief that all the love is fulfilled in this one word: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The love of God, however, is the spring of and kindles and nourishes love to man. But how is love of God to be manifested ? It is to be manifested according to our abilities, within our sphere, whether broad or narrow, and every day I bless God that the great necessary work of the world is so faithfully carried on by humble men in narrow spaces, and by faithful women in narrow circles, true to the divine love within them, performing works of simple goodness ; and so we are encouraged, not discouraged, when the greatness which the world confesses is the greatness of goodness, because that, unlike intellectual power, is a communicable power for the goodness of the community. Therefore, from the cup of our sorrow here to-day we may drink inspiration for our best endeavours; while we are thankful for the achievement that, in this instance was so large and so effective. To men of different power, different kinds of work are assigned. Some are discoverers of truth, some are vehicles of inspiration, some are inventors 584: LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. of instruments, some are builders. But truly has it been said that "the philanthropists, in the measure of their wisdom and the purity of their zeal, are the real fellow-workmen of the Most High." Other agents explore God s works and illustrate this truth. But this is of little value save as it diffuses his blessedness and confesses his help. Therefore they who by earnest effort against evil, by indignant rebuke of wrong, by steadfast advocacy of truth, justice, and freedom, work beneficently for man, most truly work for God and work with God. How faithfully, how effectually he for whom we hold these solemnities to-day wrought his work to that end it is superfluous for me to show. He enlisted in that war from which there is no discharge. He contended against what he believed to be wrong, inspired not less by the goodness of his heart than by the strength of his mind. He struck for what he believed to be right until mind and heart gave way, and, marked by scars and honours, he lies dead upon the field. Permit me still further to say, as unfolding also, in this hour, its practical lesson for ourselves, that Mr. Greeley s work in life was eminently practical work; goodness was no mere sentiment. For him it was organic force. There are those also who regarded him as what they call a " vision ary man." For my part I am thankfnl for all such visions as rest upon such solid ground of usefulness, and precipitate such concrete results. No man, it seems to me, was less given to mere idle speculation by speech or pen, or used more telling words to tangible effects. How wide, how manifold was the circle of interest which he touched. How close to men s homes and bosoms the convictions which he wrought. How many, many minds has he instructed with practical wisdom. How many lives has he stimu lated to wholesome energy. How many young men gratefully acknowledge him as their teacher and guide. What various interests of arts and labour, of education and temperance, of domestic purity, of freedom miss him, mourn for him to-day. Wielding with so much power the mightiest engine of the time placed in the editorial chair, which in our day whether for good or for evil exercises an influence greater than any official seat or throne on earth it is no light thirg to say that however stren uously and, some may think, severely he used it as the instrument of his own thoughts and purposes ; he never debased it as a stimulant of impu rity, or made it a vehicle of a single social wrong. His work was wide and various; how wide and how various this spectacle here to-day bears witness. The associations represented here of opinion, all differences of pursuit, they are composed of men who disagreed with Mr. Greeley upon many points, yet who truthfully claim fellowship with him upon some one point, and spontaneously honour his memory all these testify how closely his life was incorporated with the practical interests of men. At least they testify that while Horace Greeley had many antagonists, he had few if any enemies. May I not, without violating any of the proprieties of this occasion, express my satisfaction that, while all political issues as it were lie sealed within those enclosing lids in demonstration of the truth that peace has victories more renowned than war, the highest representa tive of the nation joins with this national testimony in honour of the- ME. CHAPIK S SERMON. 585 thinker, the worker, the patriot, and the man. Let me refer to one more lesson of the hour, and I will relieve your patience. It is the lesson of Horace Greeley s life, it is the lesson of his death; would that in life and death it might be the lesson illustrated by us all the lesson of the power, the sufficiency of the Christian faith. Far be it from me to take advantage of this occasion, which has assembled men of different creeds and differ ent forms of worship, to urge the point of Mr. Greeley s sympathy with those interpretations of Christianity which usually find expression here. Only suffer me to say, however, that he found at least, whatever errors may be mixed with his view, he found in it strength to live and strength to die by. But a grander fact than this is that upon the essential truth of Chris tianity, the truth which all believers trust in, Horace Greeley leaned his weary head and weary heart and died. Now, my friends, not because it is my office, not because it is a professional theme that I should speak so, do I say that the more I see, the longer I live, the more I believe in every fibre of my heart in that Christian faith alone is true peace and quiet in our life and in our death. The mere intellect may find satisfaction in speculation concerning God, or whether there be any God at all, or in scientific excursions through the universe; in the seeming remote pros pects of our own dissolution we may raise curious queries about a future life, whether this still, cold form which lies before us is itself the com pact substance, the finality of our being, or whether from the motionless frame there has not vanished something that thought and knew and spoke and lived and evidently is not here, in the assumptions of our modern wisdom, knowing so many things, and as we think impartially, we may criticise the claims of the ancient Bible and of the historical crisis; but when the forces of nature press upon the life-springs of our being, and we want to know something of the power that bears us up and carries us along when the lamp of our conscious being flickers in the advancing darkness of the grave, and the question rises straight before us, " Is this the end of all. or is there something more?" Oh! when our evil habits accuse us, and our false lives rebuke us, and we feel our moral weakness, and know we cannot erect ourselves above ourselves, then, indeed, does it come to us as a joy and as a victory the truth that was uttered by Horace Greeley: " I know that my Redeemer liveth." Job was a great sufferer. Affliction after affliction came upon him with whirlwind blast and light ning stroke. He mourned and wept, and looking through a tumultuous struggle that came upon him he ended with the peace of the grave, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest; but still through and beyond all he recognized this truth, that there was to him a helper, a vindicator, a redeemer, and that was his strength and his victory. Our friend and brother had his hour of desolation and darkness. Afflic tion after affliction fell upon him, and he longed for rest. No doubt he breathed the spirit of the simple verse : Life is the torrid day, Burned by the wind and sun; An.d death the calm, cool evening hour. When the weary day is done. 586 LITE OF HORACE GREELEY. But he looked through and beyond this. Those were the transient shad ows, and I thank God from my heart and from my soul, not only for myself, but for all, that from the lips of this dying man, when all earthly good was crumbling like scaffolding, he was so strong and triumphant as to utter from his soul this simple sentence that is written over me. My friends, that was the victory of Horace Greeley s life, as well as the lesson of his death. It is the consolation of the hour. I dare not trust myself to speak to those smitten hearts. I dare not trust words to convey even one atom of human sympathy, for they would fail me before those who have thus repeatedly been smitten. There, there is your consolation : " I know that my Redeemer liveth." And now as we take the body of our friend and brother and bear it to its final rest these walls that have known him so often shall know him no more. Now, as we bend over him with these tears that will not be restrained, God grant that this may be our consolation. "Farewell, dear friend! farewell, honoured associate! fare well, noble champion!" each may say, speaking for some great interest and affection of his life. Farewell ! we know that our Redeemer liveth ! and God grant that we may know it in that final hour when, like him, there is nothing for us but to turn to God. After prayer and a solemn hymn, the procession was formed in the following order: Mounted Police. Broadway Squad. Superintendent Kelso. Mayor Hall. Inspectors Dilks and Walling. Fourth Precinct Police, Captain "Oilman. One Hundred Members of the Fire Department, under command of Engineer Shay. The Rev. Dr. Pullman, Officiating Clergyman at the Grave. HEARSE. Misses Ida and Gabrielle Greeley and other Mourners in carriages. The President of the United States, Vice-President Colfax, and Vice- President-Elect Henry Wilson^ in an open landau, surrounded by fifty policemen as a guard of honour. Governor Hoffman and Governors of adjoining States. The Tribune Editorial and Reportorial Staff. Typographical Society. Union League Club. Members of the Common Council. Heads of Departments. Distinguished Officials from adjoining cities in carriages, two deep, to the number of eighty-five. ON FOOT. THE FUNERAL. 587 Members of the Liberal Republican General Committee. Union Republican General Committee. Tammany Hall General Committee. Simon Cameron Association. Sons of Temperance. Delegations from the Arcadian, Lotos, Farmers and Rural Clubs, and American Institute. Citizens Generally. In the procession were many distinguished and eminent persons in addition to those who have been already named. Among them were General Banks, General Kilpatrick, Gen eral John A. Dix, Governor-elect of New York, Ex-Governors "Ward and Ashley, General P. H. Jones, Postmaster of New- York, Ex-Senator Morgan, Mr. John W. Forney, of The Phila delphia Press, Mr. George W. Childs, of The Ledger, of the same city, Mr. Harding and Mr. Davis, of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. McMichael, of The North American, Mr. Cun- nington, of The Age, Mr. Samuel Bowles, of The Springfield Eepublican. The Stock Exchange and the Gold Exchange were represented by prominent members of each. During the funeral, the cities of New- York and Brooklyn stopped all business. "The whole populace poured forth," says The Tribune s report, " to watch the solemn cortege and testify their grief. From early in the forenoon until the long procession had passed by, the entire line of march, from Forty- fifth street to Greenwood Cemetery, was crowded with specta tors. It was not merely an assemblage of sight-seers; it was a gathering of sympathizing friends. As on Tuesday, sad faces and moist eyes everywhere looked out from the throng. As on Tuesday, the labouring men and women and humbler classes generally were foremost in their manifestations and most demonstrative in their sorrow. It had been noticed on Tuesday that among the visitors to the Governor s Room, at the City Hall, were great numbers of newsboys. These active little members of society were plentiful along the route yester day also, and for once their shrill cries were hushed and their spirits were quieted. Horace Greeley had always been one of their favourite heroes. They used to call out to him familiarly in the streets, and many of them, doubtless, cherished the 588 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. expectation of getting to be editors some day themselves. The coloured people were likewise numerous, and many of them seemed deeply affected. Farmers were often seen among the crowd. Sir, said a sturdy countryman to a member of The Tribune staff, in front of Mr. Sinclair s house, before the cor tege moved, I have come a hundred miles to be at the funeral of Horace Greeley; can t you possibly get me in to have one look at him? The doors had then been closed; but after many repulses the man got in. A moment later he came out with flushed face and trembling lip, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and hurried away. Forty-fifth street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues, was occupied by a great multitude of people, while the Fifth avenue, above and below the church, was almost impassable, long before the hour appointed for the funeral. Just opposite the church is a row of unfinished dwelling- houses. These were occupied by a throng which filled all the windows and covered the roof. The doorsteps of all the houses along the avenue, without exception, were thickly crowded: windows and balconies were full; hotels, club-houses, and public buildings of all kinds presented a sea of human faces. No one could misunderstand the meaning of such a gathering. It was greater than the multitude which welcomed the Grand Duke Alexis, or watched the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. It lias had no parallel in our recent history. Yet everybody knew that as a spectacle the funeral would have little to inter est the mere idle spectator. There were no soldiers, no ban ners, no flags, no emblems, no bands of music, no gaudy car with led horses. It was the plain funeral of a plain man, differing from other displays -only in being so much longer. The people came to look on because the man whose body was carried by had been their friend; because, as Mr. Beecher well remarked, he had been feet for the lame, tongue for the dumb, eyes for the blind, a heart for those who had none to sympathize with them. Never, said a gray -haired spectator among the crowd on Broadway, have I seen such a spontaneous outpour ing of the people, or the masses so generally and so deeply affected. From the rich merchant, who closed his warehouse and hung the building with festoons of black and white, down DUST TO DUST. 589 to the beggar who stood weeping by the curb-stone, all were moved by a common impulse of affection and respect. "A reporter was detailed to pass along the route of the procession a half mile or more in advance of the cortege. From Dr. Chapiu s Church to Madison Square, a distance of just a mile, the avenue was nearly blockaded. On the outer edge of the sidewalk the crowd were huddled two and three deep. On the walk within there was barely room to pass. The day would have worn a holiday aspect but for the quiet and subdued demeanour of the people, and the occasional exhibi tions of sorrow. About Madison square, and on the space before the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the concourse was still greater. All along Broadway from Fourteenth street, through which the procession moved, to Hamilton Ferry, there was a dense mass of people. About the Bowling Green, the Battery, and the ferry-house, the crowd still stood patiently waiting. On the Brooklyn side the same scenes were repeated. Along Union street to the Fourth avenue, and down the avenue to the Cemetery stretched the wonderful double lines or watchers. At Greenwood was a still more surprising sight. Here an enormous concourse had gathered, standing about the entrance gates, and fringing the winding roads, and concentrating about the open grave so that the mourners, when the cortege arrived, had the greatest difficulty in following the hearse." The whole city was in mourning. And as it was with iSTew- / O York, so it was with Brooklyn. Flags floated at half-mast. Yast numbers of buildings were placed in mourning. Trade, speculation, all branches of business paused, paying reverential respect to all that remained of this devoted friend of man. The day was nearly done when the cortege reached the cemetery, and stopped on Locust Hill, where only a month before, the remains of Mrs. Greeley had been deposited. The open vault, containing the bodies of his wife and three children, was surrounded by a vast assemblage, through whom it was with difficulty the police made way for the procession. A brief prayer followed, the body was lowered, the daughters, descending, laid upon the coffin their tribute of flowers, w ; tJi which rest forever peacefully the ashes of Horace Greeley! 590 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. Said The Times: The funeral of Horace Greeley yesterday drew together an immense number of persons, all of whom were anxious to testify their respect for the greatest journalist of the United States. The streets were filled with spectators from morning till night, and among the mourners were very many of Mr. Greeley s old political enemies. The President, Vice-Presi dent Colfax, Senator Wilson, Senator Conkling, Secretary Belknap, and Minister Washburne were among those who attended the funeral services in the Church. Seldom has an eminent man received greater proofs of the respect in which he was held by his fellow-citizens. Said The World: " IT IS DONE." The last sad rites due to the memory of an eminent citizen and most remarkable man have been fittingly performed ; and surely so extraordi nary a tribute was never before paid to simple moral worth. When royalty has fallen there may have been more imposing pageants, more of the show and trappings of funereal pomp ; the restoration of the remains of the first Napoleon from St. Helena to " the France he loved so well " filled the streets of Paris with a spectacle never surpassed or equalled in consigning a poor piece of human clay to its last resting-place ; even the obsequies of the Duke of Wellington were doubtless more grand as a mere ceremony; but in our plain republican life, on this side of the Atlantic, there has never been anything so impressive as the burial of Mr. Greeley yesterday. The gazing, reverent, sorrowing, thronging multitudes who lined both sides of the streets and filled all the door-steps, balconies, and windows, leaving not a yard of unoccupied standing room throughout the four miles from Dr. Chapin s church to the South Ferry, with a cor responding though not quite so dense a double line all the way from the Brooklyn landing to Greenwood, is a thing without parallel at any former American funeral since the first settlement of the country. " It is done ;" it has been most fittingly and aff ectingly done ; done in a manner that reflects infinite credit on the free, unbought, disinterested feelings which well up from the deep fountains of the great generous popular heart, and which reflects almost equal credit upon the high official personages who, disregarding urgent demands on their time, made a night journey from Washington to be present on this occasion. The sudden hush of strifes too recent and hot to be easily cooled, and the magnanimous sinking of party animosities over this honoured grave, are honourable to human nature as showing that our political antipathies rest merely on the surface or lie at the outer circumference of our hearts, and that, at their inner core, nothing is so honoured as deep sincerity and genuine moral worth. There was one venerable person present yesterday whose attendance and kindly words respecting the deceased seemed to us far more impressive and affecting than the graceful homage paid by the highest officers of the THE WORLD S EDITORIAL. 591 Federal Government The distinguished individual lo whom we here refer has been reserved to see many former associates fall around him. It is but a short time since he attended Mr. Seward s funeral at Auburn, and he has now paid a willing tribute of respect to one with whom his rela tions were not so intimate and confidential, but who has fought on the same side with him in many former political battles, though they have been separated in the controversies of more recent years. This distin guished retired journalist, this very able astute politician, has acted in perfect keeping with the affectionate warmth of nature which his friends have always recognized as lying at the very roots of his character, in coming to mingle his tears and sympathies with those of the other mourners. Politicians, like other men, have their faults; but the last fault which can be truly charged on men influential in politics is heart- lessness. There is no pursuit so eminently social as politics; none in which a strong hold on the hearts of other men is so indispensable to success. The reason is obvious enough ; the very essence of politics is associated action, and no man has ever greatly succeeded, at least in our Ameriean politics, who has not possessed a large and almost magnetic social nature, capable of binding men to him by other ties than selfish interest. In the lower strata of politics there are doubtless instances enough of men "whose god is their belly" or their ambition; but we are now speaking of the higher ranks of political leaders. We do not believe that in our American public life, any leading politician has ever been conspicuous in the first rank, who has not numbered among his virtues that capacity to make friends, and that staunch fidelity in standing by friends, which are among the most lovable and beautiful traits of human nature. The veteran, retired politician to whom we allude as having attended Mr. Greeley s funeral yesterday, possesses this virtue, and the singular personal fascination which is its consequence, in a preeminent degree above almost all his cotemporaries. While politicians must take their just share of blame, it would be unjust to deny them the warmth of heart and generous social instincts to which they are as much indebted for their power as woman is indebted for hers to her beauty and tender ness. These virtues of our political leaders never fail to manifest them selves on any occasion which, like that yesterday, recalls the ties of a common human nature. Lest any reader should fail to understand this allusion, which will be easily intelligible to most, we will say that the distinguished person referred to is Mr. Thurlow Weed. May the day be far distant when he shall be the unconscious recipient of honours similar to those which he forgot his infirmities in paying, yesterday, to one with whom he has so sharply differed in recent years! His presence was more generous and impressive than even that of the President of the United States. Mr. Weed and Mr. Greeley were recognized powers in American politics long before General Grant had emerged from obscurity. But President Grant has acted in a most generous, becoming spirit in honour- ing the funeral of the eminent citizen and patriot who was so lately his competitor. We trust these recent occurrences will cause the people to 502 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. form more indulgent judgments of political leaders, and of their capacity to participate in all the larger and deeper human sympathies. But, whatever their lesson, these remarkable obsequies are "done." What took place yesterday under a bright December sun, at the house of mourning, at the house of worship, in the thronged streets where lifted hats and tearful eyes kept greeting the hearse as it passed, and under the bare trees of Greenwood where the last prayer was said and the black casket laden with white, fresh flowers was gently slidden down into the family vault where dust was committed to its native dust, whatever may be its significance for us and those who are to come after us, it is all over. The affecting spectacle of yesterday becomes a hallowed remembrance to day, and all that was visible of Mr. Greeley, his outcomings, and ingoings among us, his form and presence, his appearance on public and social occasions, his words of counsel, his deeds of charity, are things which have passed from the earth forever. " It is done." Let us hope that the lesson and admonition will not end with the useful life and funeral honours. The old may learn charity and the young derive encouragement from the impressive witness which has been borne to the power of virtue to win just recognition. This rich reward in moral esteem and appreciation, rebukes the vehemence of partisanship and attests the value and nobleness of a life steadily devoted to unselfish aims. If it shall have the effect to disarm animosities and introduce a healing spirit into our politics, the departed patriot will have benefitted the country by his death as well as by his life. But life, death, obsequies, outward demonstrations of affection and honour, are all over. Nothing remains of Horace Greeley but the influence which lives after him. We sorrowfully take leave of him in his own last intelligible words, " It is done." Said the Herald: Yesterday the mortal remains of Horace Greeley were consigned to their last resting place. The obsequies were worthy of the man, and it would be unjust to refuse to admit that New- York honoured itself by the respect which it showed to the memory of the great journalist. It is bu* seldom that such a spectacle as our streets presented yesterday is witnessed in any city or among any people. Not since the funeral of the lamented Lincoln has such an impressive scene been witnessed, and not even then were sympathy and sorrow so visible on the faces of the crowds of human beings who lined the sidewalks. In the church and among those who followed the remains to the grave were noticeable many of the city s mosi distinguished children. It was not, however, New- York alone which did honour yesterday to the great departed. Our sister cities, Brooklyn and Jersey City, and the neighbouring townships were well represented. Repre sentatives from Baltimore and Philadelphia and other of the large cities of the Union were not wanting, and the presence of President Grant, the Vice-President and the Vice-President elect, gave proof that the nation EDITORIALS OF THE HERALD AND THE POST. 593 was mourning over the loss of one of its greatest citizens. There was nothing in the demonstration fitted to remind one of the more pompous funerals of the Old World, when some prince or warrior or illustrious statesman is borne to his final home. It was not such a funeral as London gave some years ago to the Duke of Wellington. It was quiet and modest as contrasted with that which we gave to our own Lincoln. There was no ostentatious turn-out on the part of the societies; there was no grand military display, and from the church to the grave "not a drum was heard, not a funeral note." In silence the procession moved ; with silence the crowds looked on, and in silence, as was most becoming, the great journalist was laid in his grave. The silence, however, did not indicate the absence of sympathy, but the reverse, for sorrowful looks and wet eyes, in numerous instances, testified to the existence of feelings which noisy demonstrations could not express. It was abundantly manifest yes terday in the church, on the streets, and at the grave that many felt that not only was a good and a true man taken away from the midst of them, but that they individually had lost a friend. " Goodness," said Dr. Chapin yesterday, when speaking over the remains of the dead, "goodness is better than greatness. It brings us nearer to God." Few will refuse to admit that, whatever the faults of Horace Greeley, he had in him many of the elements of a truly good man. He was a man of the people, and the people s cause he never abandoned. His sympathies were with the oppressed in all lands, and with pen and purse he was ever ready to help them. The grave has now closed over his mortal remains; his spirit is with its God. Let his weaknesses and shortcomings, if he had such, be forgotten, and let his great outstanding merits as a man and as a jour nalist be remembered and held up as an example. The Evening Post, which had had more discussions with The Tribune than any other Republican journal, The Times only excepted, remarked: The honours shown his remains, then, are honours done to his profes sion; but they are also an evidence of the consideration in which he was himself held. They prove that whatever opinions we may have individu ally formed of the intellectual or personal merits of the subject of them, the great body of the people discovered in him grounds for admiration, attachment, and gratitude. They saw in his efforts to enlighten and guide the sentiments of his fellows something more than a paltry pursuit of wealth or a vain ambition of power and fame. They saw in them an earnest desire to do good, to help forward the better interests of the com munity, and to maintain that spirit of justice and freedom which in our hot and reckless enterprises we are apt to forget, but which constitutes the very bond and cement, as it does the life and glory, of civilized society. With Mr. Greeley s political and philosophical views of things, we were not in entire accord ; his manner of presenting his convictions did not 38 594 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. always meet our approval ; but for some objects, and these among the most momentous that ever divided the nation, we laboured long in common, and we can bear witness to the zeal, the fearlessness, and the vigour with which he battled for the right. In the slow but intense and bitter contro versy against Slavery, which has filled our history for nearly fifty years, we found him always a powerful coadjutor, and we doubt whether any single instrument used against the gigantic wrong was more effective in the work of its gradual overthrow than the press which he managed with so much courage and determination. So far as the history of that conflict has been written, and so far as it is yet to be written, one of the most prominent places must be given to the sturdy, unflinching, and persistent assaults of The Tribune newspaper. The more zealous Abolitionists were sometimes apt to criticise the peculiar methods of its warfare, but none, we think, will at this day deny the efficiency of its services. Other journals of New- York expressed feelings of the kind liest admiration for Mr. Greeley, and spoke of his death as a loss to mankind. The Tribune gave a very great proportion of its space to an account of the funeral. "If we had a Westminster Abbey," it said, in conclusion of a long and beautiful editorial, " our friend would yesterday have been laid therein. And yet he would not have desired that stately isolation. For he believed that more and more, as the years go on, the sentiment of religion would refuse to be entombed in cathedrals and to consecrate here and there a building. To him all places were sacred wherein a great humanity had fol lowed after the Highest. And he would have chosen the equal sky for his canopy and the generous earth for his bed, because the same rest and shelter are free to all the race. We can afford to leave him in his unmarked grave. Time and Death, those kindly counsellors, have undertaken his vindica tion who in life would never -stoop to vindicate himself, and to them we may safely trust his fame. " For Humanity sweeps onward. Where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands, And the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe returns To gather up the scattered ashes into History s golden urns " The Tribune also published an open letter from Mr. Sinclair Tousey to the President: A NATIONAL FUNERAL. 595 To PRESIDENT GRANT Sir: I trust that I shall not be charged -with presumption in addressing you on the subject of this letter. I want to thank you, not for any favour bestowed on my friends, or shown to me. Thanks for such things are as common as the benefits they confer. 1 desire to thank you for something greater and better than these; for something much beyond the ordinary practice of high official life. I desire to thank you for the respect shown by you to Mr. Greeley on his death-bed, and for the great respect you paid his character and memory by your attendance on his funeral. It was a great compliment for the head of a great nation to decline attendance on an official festivity while a private citizen was dying, a citizen who had no claims on the sympathy of the official, either of blood or close friendship. It was a much greater compliment when that Executive laid aside the pressing duties of his great office, and, making a night journey of hundreds of miles at an inclement season, took the place of a private person, among the thousands gathered together to pay the last tribute of respect that the living can pay the dead. For your remembrance of Mr. Greeley, dying; for your attendance at his funeral ; for the tearful attention you paid to the sad ceremonies of that occasion, Mr. President, I thank you with all earnest ness. I am very sure that in doing so I but echo the sentiments of hun dreds of thousands of your fellow-citizens, whose views of public affairs led them and myself to support, in the late canvass, the man to whom you have shown such high respect. By these acts you have removed prejudices, changed opponents into friends, and shown the world that great official life need not deaden the better instincts of our common humanity. By these acts you have taught the nations that Americans never forget what is due to the character of their great citizens, and that the passions of an exciting political contest never destroy the respect that American partisan opponents have for the good lives of good men. I thank you, Mr. President, and pray that a long and happy life may await yon. And when it shall please the Great Ruler to send the angel of Death to call you hence, may your passage to the tomb be made smooth by the affections of kind friends, and the grave close over you with the heartfelt prayers of your countrymen for your eternal rest. Very respectfully, your friend, SINCLAIR TOUSET. NEW- YORK, Dec. 6, 1872. But the funeral of Horace Greeley was not confined to New- York. It was a national ceremony; nay, it was a national reality. The people everywhere put on a real sorrow. Those who had been the most earnest in their opposition to him as a candidate for the Chief Magistrate no less sincerely than Mr. Tousey thanked the President for his act of beautiful kindness in attending the funeral, in unfriendly criticism of which, 596 LIFE OF HORACE GREELET. there was but one voice raised, so far as I recollect, in all the land, and that was the voice of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison. " And the people ah, the people They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Fell a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone They are neither man nor woman They are neither brute nor human They are Ghouls." With this exception, the whole people may be said to have profoundly sorrowed at the death of Horace Greeley, and to have wept over his grave. Thus it was with the National Congress, with State Legislatures, with the Electoral College, with municipal bodies, in all parts of the republic, with the press and pulpit. l If not by his life, by his death he accom plished a sublime work of pacification; and since he began his long rest in Greenwood, there can never again be the bitterness, the injustice of personal assault in political contests, which prevailed before. This injustice was in his case made so palpable to all minds by the fact of his death occurring so soon after the political contest of the year, whereby most men were led to think honestly of his life and character, that it can never more be repeated to anything like the extent to which it had before obtained. If there is any such instance in history, where any human being has so constantly served his countrymen throughout Jife and whose death was also a signal benefit to them, I do not recall it. For many public expressions upon the life and character of Mr. Greeley see Appendix " E." near the end of this volume. CHAPTEK XXXI. TO SUM THE WHOLE THE CLOSE OF ALL. Review of the Private Life and Public Services of Mr. Greeley Estimate of His Genius His Character The Services He Rendered His Country and Mankind A Friend of the Labouring Man, One of the People, a Great, a Good, and an Honest Man , though not a Perfect Character. I HAVE thus endeavoured to portray the private life and public services of Horace Greeley, exercising my best judgment in the selection from the vast amount of material at command those facts, writings, utterances which would appear the most correctly and fully to place his character and genius before the general reader. For connected accounts of his life I have been greatly and constantly indebted to the biography by Mr. James Parton and to the " Recollections of a Busy Life " by Mr. Greeley himself. Other materials I have found in history; the lives of cotemporaries with whom Mr. Greeley was asso ciated in personal or political friendship, and of those who opposed him; in the public journals of the times; in many letters; in the statements of acquaintances; in my own obser vation of recent events. I need hardly say that the Life of Horace Greeley which shall do complete and full justice to his benignant character, his miriad-minded genius, the services he rendered his countrymen and mankind by his long and unpar alleled labours in their behoof, cannot now be written. Time must eradicate the asperities, the misapprehensions, the mis representations which grew out of the discussions in which he engaged, the reforms and revolutions which he did so much to promote. When sufficient time shall have elapsed for such 9 work to be accomplished, and to be received by the public, with honest, unbiassed judgment, and the work itself shall have been written with truthfulness, and skill, and fullness, then, and, perhaps not till then, will the wonderful life, character, (597) 598 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELET. and genius of the Founder of The New-York Tribune be com pletely understood and justly appreciated. Then may works of this nature pass out of public attention. Meantime, they may be of service, not only because, haply, they may contain information of value to general readers, but may also serve to hasten the period when the American people especially shall willingly do justice to one of the best and greatest of their countrymen. In December, 1868, the societies of the Army of the Cum berland, the Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Ohio, and the Army of Georgia, held a reunion in the city of Chicago. There have been few public gatherings of more interest than this; few where so many men who had rendered their country great service were collected together; none where good feeling and enthusiasm were so irrepressibly outspoken. Nor has there ever been a single scene of more historical inter est, or more grandly imposing in itself, than when the thousands who had been officers in the principal armies of the West, met together to hear an address of welcome by General W. T. Sherman, and an oration by General W. W. Belknap, after wards Secretary of War. The opening sentences of the latter s address will long be remembered by thousands who heard them: " Soldiers of the Armies of the Cumberland, the Ohio, and Georgia; Comrades of the Army of the Tennessee: It all seems like a dream, the insult to the flag; the President s call for troops; the great uprising of the people; the unfurling to the breeze, from every mast and staff and spire of the North, of the nation s emblem; the enthusiastic meetings of men of all classes to devise means in that solemn hour to strike a blow for union and save the nation; the prompt response of the young men of the land; the muster-in of armed hosts; the waving of handkerchiefs, and the hand shakings at parting, and the last kisses of the loved; the first battles in the West ; the eager demand for news ; the victory at Donelson, where began the public life of a new leader of the Nation; the field of Shiloh, with its bloody victory seized from defeat; the gradual opening of the Father of Floods; Yicksburgh with its memorable siege; the return home as HIS WONDERFUL CAREER. 599 veterans of those who but a short time before had left as untried youth; the proud consciousness of the youthful soldier, as he told of his deeds afar off in the wars; the return to the field; the flan kings and fightings of our great Captain about Atlanta, until it was ours and fairly won; the sudden depart ure, as, turning their backs on home, the men of this Army made their march to the sea; Savannah and its pleasant, holi days of rest; the seemingly unceasing swamps of Carolina; the toilsome march to Raleigh; the welcome words of the announcement which told of the surrender of the flower of the Armies of the South; the joy of that happy hour turned to gloom, as the hushed intelligence of the death of the nation s Chief was broken in low words to the men; the final march to Washington; the grand review at the nation s Capi tal; the last order, and the welcome muster-out; all these memories seem not like memories, but like the faint glimpses of an imagined picture, as, panorama like, it passes before the eye, and leaves here and there an impress, and is gone; like the half-faded recollection of something that we have seen, and yet at times can scarce believe that we have witnessed. * * It all seems like a dream!" When we consider the remarkable career of Horace Greeley, it all seems like a dream. Other men have made their way from pinching poverty to luxury and affluence; from the hum blest walks of human life to the highest positions of official station or of intellectual influence. And yet there are few if any in all history in whose lives we find such remarkable growth in many mental attributes as in that of Horace Greeley. Who would have supposed, when he first entered New- York as uncouth a youth as ever stepped upon Broadway, or for several years thereafter, that he would become the founder of the most influential journal of his times! Who could have any more than dreamed, listening to his thin voice when he delivered his lecture upon Human Life, that he would become among the most distinguished of his cotemporaries upon the platform; that he would come to deliver public addresses more demonstrative of intellectual greatness, of comprehensive, beneficent statesmanship, than had been uttered by any of hie 600 LIFE OF HOBACE GTCEELEY. countrymen! How it would have been placed among the most fantastic of visions, if any one had predicted, that from the crucible of Horace Greeley s mind, generally detested Fourier- ism itself would come forth a great reform, receiving the hearty assent of all political parties, and conferring inestima ble practical good upon vast numbers of people! Who would have thought, when nearly all the journals of New- York were casting ridicule and obloquy upon the Editor of The Tribune, or when the wild mob roared about his office thirsting for his life, that the great metropolis should come to hold him, living, in more kindly regard than any of her citizens, and, upon his death, all of her inhabitants, stopping business, commerce, pleasure, should shed tears of affectionate sorrow over his remains and give him who had been the plainest man in all the city, a far greater and more imposing funeral than had been accorded to the most illustrious Chief Magistrate of the republic! How like a beautiful, thrilling dream does the life of Horace Greeley appear, when we cast our mind s eye rap idly over its events. Happily, the bright visions of the present become the realities of the hereafter. Time, too, ripens vis ionaries into prophets. It has already been remarked that, after the establishment of The New- York Tribune, Mr. Greeley had little leisure for the cultivation of the amenities of private life, because of the demands upon his time and thoughts of the most exacting profession. We have seen how great was his love of family. His affection for his father and mother, brothers and sisters, was a beautiful trait in his character. The assistance he rendered his father, ever dividing his scanty earnings with him while poor himself, long subjecting himself to many self- denials that he might give the more aid, is an instance of filial devotion which cannot be too frequently studied by rapid and rampant Young America. In his own family, Mr. Greeley was a devoted husband and father. Howsoever tempestuous his public life, that of home was ever bright, and cheerful, and merry. If afflictions came, as they often did, his sorrow was deep, as his feelings were surpassingly tender, but never developed into surliness. If he were sometimes in journal- HIS GENEROSITY. 601 ism and the fierce conflicts through which so much of his life was passed as impetuous and headstrong as Peter, he ever at home with his family and particular friends resembled the dis ciple whom Jesus loved. Keen observers have remarked that dutiful, loving husbands and wives sometimes almost become one nature, each being necessary for the other, and that in such cases it often happens that when one dies the other speedily follows to the better land. Whether this was the case with Horace Greeley may never be known in time. But it is probably true that her husband was the only person on earth who fully understood Mrs. Greeley, and that his wife was the only person in all the world who fully understood Horace Greeley. His daughters, doubtless, would have corne to do so, had Mr. Greeley lived some years longer; for to them his heart had ever gone out in love, which but increased with time. Thus in the four-fold character of son, brother, husband, father, Horace Greeley s life was a perfect manifestation, I think, of unmixed goodness and greatness. In social conversation, Mr. Greeley was ever able to talk well upon a vast variety of topics. Though, ordinarily, his conversation, like most of his writings, was upon topics of a practical nature, and with the object of accomplishing some practical good too, yet would he often talk of the most abstruse questions of religion, of philosophy, of science, and with a boldness of thought which would have astonished many persons. He often exhibited keen wit and droll humour in conversation, and was ever quick and sparkling in repartee. His construction of sentences in conversation was ever unex ceptionable, but he had the habit of conversational contraction of words. One would frequently hear him say " don t," " won t," " shan t," and the like. Mr. Greeley s generosity appears to have been entirely boundless. He probably gave away more money, according to his means, than almost any other man who ever lived. He did not have the capacity to resist an appeal to his benevolence. His compassion for those who suffered, for those who were in want, was surpassingly great and tender. His generous dis positions not unfrequently led him into mistakes which were a 602 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. heavy tax upon liis purse, and he finally put an end to caroless giving and endorsing, but death alone had power to stop his generous acts and his deeds of charity. Horace Greeley was by nature entitled to "the grand old name of gentleman." He was, indeed, always a democrat one of the people. The manners, the fashions of polite societv he never adopted. iSTor is it necessary, to be a gentleman, that one should adopt those manners and fashions. . They too often cover rudeness, coarseness of heart, supreme selfishness, sordid, intriguing vice. Remove the shell and you may sometimes see a boor, sometimes even a scoundrel. In deference to the wishes and feelings of others, in subordinating one s self to the general enjoyment, to the pleasiire and happiness of those about one, one may exhibit all gentlemanly qualities, though one be clothed in homespun and ignorant of many conven tional rules. Such was the gentlemanliness of Horace Greeley that he instinctively treated all whom he met with kindness and natural courtesy. If, as we have seen, he sometimes made use of harsh, insulting expressions in editorials and undig nified expressions in conversation, we have also seen that these were faults growing out of his stormy public life rather than developments of natural instincts. That indescribable intellectual power which we call genius Horace Greeley possessed as man has rarely possessed it. He himself once said that genius is Work. Certainly those who have become the most celebrated of men have in every instance been notable workers. A few, in spirit of false pride, have undertaken to deceive their cotemporaries into the belief that they dashed off works, or, perhaps, poems, at a single sitting, and rather as relaxation than work; but it has always been discovered, after their death, that it was through hard work, years of study, that they acquired the capacity of doing with apparent ease that which would cost others great toil, and which, no matter how long and hard they might toil, most men could not do at all. In her introduction to a volume of Speeches upon Political Questions by George ~W. Julian, Mrs. L. Maria Child, speaking of that statesman, says: "Like many of our distinguished citizens, he is what is called a self- HIS GENIUS FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 603 made man; a class that would be better designated as labour- made men." Perhaps it makes little difference whether we use the one designation or the other, seeing that among genuinely great men there are only those who are self-made or labour-made. Whenever God gives greatness or the capacity to achieve it, to a man, it is always upon the condition pre cedent of great labour on the part of the recipient of the gift. The seeming exceptions to the rule will be found, upon careful examination, not to be exceptions at all. Even Thomson, who was so lazy that he would eat peaches from the tree, rather than put himself to the trouble of taking his hands out of his pockets to pluck the fruit, was a hard worker, mentally. A little further on Mrs. Child quotes from the Quaker, Elias Hicks, " It takes live fish to swim up stream." But wherever we may place the source of this wonderful intellectual power called genius, and whatever we may think as to its necessary aids, it is certain that Horace Greeley, even from early boyhood, was a constant, hard student. The genius of reform was early developed in him as we have seen. Of this irrepressible spirit of righting wrongs, Martin Luther himself was not more greatly possessed than Horace Greeley. He also very early in life manifested a genius for public affairs. Tears before he had reached legal majority he understood the political issues before the people, and the rationale of our goy- ernment far more thoroughly than any other person in the community. His knowledge of the details of political affairs came to be wonderful. Mr. Julius Henri Browne, in his appre ciative article in Harper s Monthly, to which reference has already been made, says: "Mr. Greeley s memory was as retentive as Pascal s. His mind was a marvellous store-house of facts, dates, and events. He seemed to forget nothing worth remembering. He was a political cyclopedia of the best revised edition, and entirely trustworthy for the last forty years. He was every hour of the day what The Tribune Almanac is at the close of December. It was hard for him to understand how any member of his profession could be ignorant or obli vious of ten thousand things which few besides himself held in recollection. He thought every journalist should have at 604 LIFE OF HORACE GREELE5T. least eotemporaneous political facts and data at immediate command." The truth is, Mr. Greeley had a genius for "facts, dates, and events." Most others do not hold these ten thou sand things in recollection because it is beyond their capacity to do so. This genius for public affairs of which I speak amounted to statesmanship. He was three months in Congress, and he accomplished more for the country in that short period than a large number of men of national reputation have accom plished during many years of official life. His political speeches during the Presidential campaign of 1872 are unpar alleled in our> history. We shall presently speak more at length of the results of his labours as a statesman. But it was as a journalist that Mr. Greeley s genius was most conspicuously illustrated. It is universally agreed that he was the greatest of American journalists; the founder of the most influential of newspapers. Mr. Greeley was not superior to all other great editors in that enterprise which pro cures intelligence of passing events at the earliest practicable moment. He was not equal to others in making journalism profitable. There are two ideas of journalism extant in the land, radically different the one from the other. One is, that a newspaper is solely a business establishment for the sale of news and such matters of intelligence as the public will be likely to buy. The other idea is that a journal should be not only the medium of all current intelligence but a teacher also. It should have ideas of its own; convictions. No newspaper was ever better, as such, than The Tribune; not one has equalled it as a teacher of the people. Every one of the great morning journals of New- York is this day a better paper than it would have been but for Horace Greeley. And what is true of them is true of all the other great journals of our country. He enlarged the sphere of journalism vastly. More by his influence than that of any other journalist the public press became, not only a record of the world s current events, but also of its ideas. It became very much more than a mere chronicle, however full and varied that chronicle might be. It became also the guardian of the people s rights, as such HIS CHARACTER. 605 respected by government and parties. Yery largely tlirougli his influence it became the instructor of the people, lifting them up to a plane of intelligence never before reached; an institution more powerful than law, more potential than gov ernment, an institution so interwoven with the trade, the commerce, the labour, the thoughts, the progress, the happi ness, of society that its corruption or its destruction would be an unspeakable calamity to mankind. The overthrow of the best government would produce less permanent ill than the overthrow of that all-comprehensive, independent public jour nalism which the genius of Horace Greeley was so preeminently influential in establishing. It was because he knew that this institution, its representative men guarding its purity and attending to its development with due vigilance and energy, would become the means of the most beneficent influence in behalf of the world s education, peace, progress, happiness, that he desired most of all to be remembered as the Founder of The New- York Tribune. We have seen that Mr. Greeley s opinions and acts were often not only misunderstood, but grossly misrepresented. Such was also the case in respect to his character. Wherefore, Julius Henri Browne most appropriately commenced his mag azine essay, "Horace Greeley," with the quotation from Emerson to be great, is to be misunderstood following it with the remark that if the converse of this be true, Horace Greeley was undeniably the greatest man of his age. The idiosyncrasies of Mr. Greeley s character have not been more happily or truthfully stated than by this writer: Eccentric and inconsistent as he seemed, and was to a certain extent, law and method were perceptible through all his vagaries to a mind capa ble of insight and sympathy. Tracing his peculiarities to their source, instead of looking at them externally, his nature was found to have a har mony seldom suspected by his ordinary acquaintances. He was mainly different from his fellows in that he obeyed his impulses and said what lie thought. All his journeyings, his prominent and commanding position in politics for thirty years, his association with distinguished and leading minds, and his entirely secular pursuits, never made Mr. Greeley a man of the world. He never achieved he never appeared to care for self- discipline, continuing to the very last his habit of giving way to irrita bility and petulance like a spoiled child. In a word, he was natural, and 606 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELET. refused altogetner to be bound by mere forms or conventionalities. He was so sincere that he seemed at times disingenuous, and so candid that he was charged with indirection. Coupled all his life with politicians, though rarely in harmony with them, the contrast between his plainness and their pretense was rendered especially remarkable. Because they feould not manage him they called him crotchety, and pronounced him /unstable for the reason that he would not do their bidding. Liberal to prodigality as he was in expression, he had certain reserves touching his personality, and of these he spoke not to his nearest friends. He often left his acts to strange conjectures, when a word from him would have made his conduct clear. His privacy he held sacred, rightly thinking that with it the public had nothing to do. His opinions respecting men and measures were at the command of almost anybody; but his innermost JcA, as the German metaphyscians would put it, could not be evoked. The distinguished journalist s nature was eminently dual, and they who failed to recognize this were without the key to his mystery. Self-made men and few men have owed so little as he to circumstances are prone to incompleteness. One side of their character is developed at the expense of the other. Their struggle is too severe to give leisure for roundness or finish, and when they rise their eminence renders their defects more palpable. The hardness which usually comes from protracted battle with fortune did not belong to Mr. Greeley. On the contrary, he was inclined to sentiment, and yet wholly practical in his plans and modes of accom plishment. But his mind had been ceaselessly stimulated, while his manners were neglected, and the crudity of these sometimes interfered with the proper appreciation of his manifold virtues. All his imperfec tions were on the surface, and many of them were so conspicuous that they could not escape general observation. If he had taken half the pains to correct those that he took to develop his intellect and keep his life pure and sweet, he would have been regarded as a pattern in place of a humour ist. His faults sprang from his early straits and hardships, which were insufficient, however, to choke the good seeds implanted by nature, and afterward ripening into such wholesome fruit. Mr. Greeley s duality was in his sterling manhood and his unconquered childishness. No one doubted his greatness ; but this frequently under went eclipse through his deplorable- lack of discipline. Almost in the same moment that he would prove himself a sage and seer he would fall into peevishness, and indulge in freaks which should have shamed a rustic school-boy. In this way he put weapons of ridicule into the hands of his antagonists, and strengthened their disposition to misinterpret him. To his vagaries of temper and personal whimsies he was indebted for the numberless absurdities associated with his name. While a few were aware of the gross injustice of the caricatures put forward as his true portrait, the great mass fancied him to be not materially unlike those satirical rep resentations. * For a long while nothing was too ridiculous or monstrous to be discredited if told of Mr. Greeley, and witlings of the country press, being conscious of this, were perpetually making him the grotesque hero HIS CHARACTER. 607 of impossible adventures, and the subject of interminable paragraphs. Of late years, however, these fictions were carried so far that they ceased to gain credence even with the most ignorant, though they still continued to excite merriment among those with whom iteration never loses novelty. After the breaking out of our civil war, all persons of intelligence, whatever their party, learned to respect Mr. Greeley, because they thought him a man of earnest convictions, of broad humanity, and inflexible principle. Many considered him impractical, mistaken, visionary ; but his sincerity and integrity were seldom questioned. Judging The Tribune philosopher sympathetically, and making all allowances for his untrained youth, he must still be regarded as a charac ter combining numerous antagonisms and for the reason that he was one thing through his intellect, and something else through his tempera ment. He counselled conservatism and expediency sometimes, and was himself radical and headstrong. Principles absorbed him ; men scarcely touched him at all. Calm in mental atmospheres, he parted with self- restraint in personal associations. Measures impressed him ; politicians annoyed him. Intemperate as he was occasionally with his pen, he was more so with his tongue the ready vehicle of his irritation. His want of discipline prompted him to yield to his moods, which were many and contradictory, and not to be foreseen even by himself. As may be sup posed, his casual acquaintances judged him by his manners, and the public by his mind ; and this accounts for the different views held of Horace Greeley the individual, and Horace Greeley the journalist and reformer. In the latter capacity he will go down to posterity ; the coming years will swallow up his minor defects, and leave his large virtues only to be remembered. If it was Mr. Greeley s fate to be misapprehended, much of this misap prehension arose from his own waywardness, moodiness, and determination not to set himself right. Assured of the rectitude of his conduct, he was careless of the impression formed of it, except in instances where temper about trifles got the better of his native judgment. He would be patient and reticent under a serious accusation, when a petty paragraph in an obscure journal would drive him to exasperation. He would declare his supreme unconcern as to the opinions expressed of some policy he had chosen, and an hour later would write a card, bitterly personal, upon a matter too trivial to be noticed. His friends could not be certain of him, for he could not be certain of himself. His growing up wild, so to speak, left a certain trace of social savagery in his nature that could not be eradicated subsequently, even had he made an effort to that end. After every attempt to explain his eccentricities and reconcile his inconsisten cies, something of the unintelligible will adhere to his character, which was unquestionably unique. He was not only unlike other men he was unlike himself often. General rules failed to apply to him on account of numerous exceptions, which, in his case, might almost have been bound into a rule. 608 LIFE OF HORACE GREELEY. There was no particle of deceitfulness in Mr. Greeley s char acter. His naturalness, sincerity, candour, plainness, were ever manifest. No man was ever more richly endued with practicality, no one ever had his life guided by more lofty, heroic sentiment. As the critics have pronounced Fenimore Cooper s character, " Leather-stocking," a poet in reality, though he could hardly spell his own name, so Horace Greeley found beauty and sublimity in many things which were to others common-place, and lived in an atmosphere of exalted feeling and reliection not at al] of the earth earthy. His earnestness was one of his most notable characteristics. I think he did not know fear. He appeared perfectly uncon cerned on the floor of Congress when all others were fiercely excited; he laughed at the rnob which caused the cheeks of men who had faced the cannon s mouth to blanch. Perfect integrity was blood of his blood and bone of his bone. He never drew a dishonest breath. He was so perfectly honest that he could not assume the meaningless hypocricies of social courtesies. Much of his alleged irritability was, in fact, but manifestation of his downright honesty. " Mr. Greeley," said the gentleman-usher of a delegation of Republican politicians who once called to instruct him as to the conduct of the cam paign in New York, " these gentlemen have great influence in the State; they are of the highest standing; they are " A set of confounded asses," broke in Mr. Greeley, "who are wasting their time and trying to waste mine by coming here." At the bottom of this there was something very different from rudeness. To his liberality there was no limit, as there was not, either, to his magnanimity; A more thorough American, a more genuine democrat, never lived. Had he become Presi dent of the United States, he would have reformed the glitter ing style of the Capital to the simplicity and beauty of the elder times; and voluptuous lives would have been kindly rebuked and chastened under the influence of his unspotted purity. Such the genius, such the character of Horace Greeley, he was able to render his countrymen and mankind services of inestimable value, all the good results of which shall not cease HIS PUBLIC SERVICES. 609 until the human race shall have accomplished its destiny and passed away. If the best genius be really Work, who ever possessed it in higher degree or greater measure than he? When he was engaged in the hard work of conducting partisan newspapers, he did much to dignify and ennoble politics. The Jeffersonian campaign journal was not only potential in giving New York to the Whigs, but was repre sentative of a lofty political morality and of a broad and earnest patriotism. The Log-Cabin newspaper could never have gained its wide circulation and unequalled influence, even during the exciting campaign in which it originated, but for the fact that it was not approached by any of its great and brilliant rivals, in the presentation of arguments for the reform and purification of government, and in the advocacy of measures for the well-being of the people. And afterwards, during the continuance of the Whig party, Horace Greeley, though ever identified with that organization was much more than a Whig. Once formally and expressly, and many times in reality, he utterly disavowed the platform of the party, and was constantly enraging the managers and the manipulators by the advocacy of reforms outside of party, which were at the time unpopular. If the Whig party did not earnestly oppose a war in the interest of slavery, if it did not become the champion of Free Soil, it was because it failed to see the right and into the future as Horace Greeley did. Mr. Greeley s services in the Republican party were great, not only in securing success for that organization, but in behalf of the country, when it obtained control of the govern ment. Not a beneficent measure, not a wise policy to which that party gave success but had Horace Greeley among its earliest friends and for its bravest, most efficient advocate. And he departed from it the moment he was convinced that it could not be trusted to carry out policies and reforms for the pacification of the country and the purification of the govern ment. When, as he conceived, the progress and prosperity of the republic, the present and future welfare of the people, demanded the disruption of existing parties and the formation of a new one, he severed old political ties and associated him- 39 610 LIFE OF HORACE GEEELEY. self with those in the success of whose principles lay the highest good for all his countrymen. Sooner or later the whole people will agree that the reforms of which Horace Greeley became the most eminent representative man in 1872 were based upon wisdom, the highest statesmanship, the loftiest and purest patriotism; and that if those reforms shall be long postponed, it can only be through the most melancholy calamity if not the ruin of his country. I have said that Horace Greeley was, while he acted with the Whig party, much more than a Whig. So, too, he was more than a Republican, and then more than a Liberal. He was not like Burke, " Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind." How many reforms did he advocate when they were un popular! Among American statesmen he may be regarded as the originator of the Homestead policy. It is difficult to believe that when he first introduced and advocated a Home stead bill in Congress, it was treated with ridicule and taunts and received only his own vote. The Temperance reform ever had in him an earnest and powerful friend. Among the earliest and strongest advocates of cheap postage, he for years in curred the displeasure of men in office by his persistent demand for the abolition of the franking" privilege. Who was an earlier or more powerful friend of Emancipation than Horace Greeley ! There was not one who so strongly and persistently urged the wisdom and the justice of impartial suffrage. There was no policy of the reconstruction of the Union after the war of the rebellion having so much of wisdom, and justice, and safety, and greatness in it as the policy enunciated by Horace Greeley before the thunders of the terrible conflict had been entirely stilled. And whensoever and wheresoever that policy was adopted, it was at once shown to be as practi cally beneficent, as it was generous, magnanimous in idea. To Labour Reform he ever gave hearty assent and effective work. Erase from our legislation and our history the measures which have been of the greatest good to the people, the HIS SERVICES TO MANKIND. 611 reforms of the highest importance to the welfare of the body politic and the benefit of all mankind, with which the name of Horace Greeley is associated as a prominent and efficient friend, and that legislation and history would have so little in it of credit to our nationality that no detriment would come to the good name of the republic should the memory of it entirely pass away. Think of the United States without the Pacific Railroad, without Emancipation, without impartial suffrage, without the homestead act, without the sanctity of the national debt, without cheap postage, without the educa tion of all the people, without amnesty for our " lately erring countrymen," without the triumph of argument and reason for the settlement of international difficulties! Such would be the country, entitled to small share of high respect and admiration, but for the policies and reforms of which Horace Greeley was as influential a representative man as any of his cotemporaries. Of some of these policies and measures, with more of like nature that might be mentioned, he was a friend, when to be their friend was unpopularity, misrepre sentation, obloquy. But the greatest service which Horace Greeley rendered his country and mankind was in the establishment and conduct of The New- York Tribune. And this not only because the journal placed in his hands a means of influence more effica cious than any office could have done, but because of the character of his paper and in the good it conferred upon the people of his own and of other countries in very many ways. The expression is hackneyed, but it is true that his journal was from the day of its establishment The Tribune of the People. If, during the existence of the Whig party, it was trammelled by partizan necessities, yet even then did it fear lessly and generously give fair play to every straggling reform and a candid examination to all ideas in whose realization practical good might be accomplished. After the demise of the Whig party, it made a new departure in respect of the discussion of political topics. " It became," said The Chicago Tribune, " the champion of freedom, the champion of the men held in slavery, the champion of a Free Republic. Restrained 612 LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. by no platforms, by no considerations of mere expediency, by the hopes of no candidates, it made the direct fight in behalf of the principles of Truth, Freedom, and Justice. It fired the Northern heart; it roused the slumbering instincts of human justice; it tore men from old party associations; it placed the question in the light that men had to choose between right and wrong; it revolutionized public sentiment, and revolu tionized parties, and brought about that grand decision that it was possible to elect a government which was under no obligation to uphold Slavery or permit its extension." The meaning of this is, and it is perfectly true, that Horace Gree- ley organized victory for a Free-Soil party. He made the success of the Republican party possible. Whatever great good it was able to confer upon the country was very largely due to the influence and power of The New- York Tribune. Government itself is a means, not an end, a means whereby the good of the body politic may be accomplished. Much more is party a means, its end being to gain possession of the government. Horace Greeley, both through The Tribune and as a practical politician, did more for the organization of the Republican party than any other one of our statesmen. When the party had gained control of the government, he did more to control its vital policy than any other. Contrast the sublime spirit of his letter to President Lincoln, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," with President Lincoln s flouting reply! " The Prayer " had to be answered by a better reply than that. It came in the proclamation which has canonized its author. President Lincoln wrote the Proclamation; it was Horace Greeley who inspired it. Thtfs he organized parties, led them to victory, and then the government to the performance of its greatest and most beneficent acts; to the adoption of polity conferring the highest good upon his country and exerting the best influence upon mankind. So was it demonstrated that the people need not be subject either to party domination or governmental errors long pursued; that, as they are themselves the creators of parties and of government, so they have the means of coercing, if need be, both the one and the other, to the execution of their HIS SERVICES TO MANKIND. 613 sovereign will. And this, not by force but by argument and reason. The independent press is undoubtedly one of the beneficent logical developments of the free institutions established by the founders of our American Republic. But in giving that press character as representative of the whole people, armed, there fore, with power superior to that of party or of the state, the genius of Horace Greeley was preeminently originating and potential. And it is not impossible that the establisment thus of public journalism as a powerful means to the people of peaceful revolution, while not ceasing to be their daily teacher, may come to be generally regarded as amongst the greatest victories of freedom. A score of great journals, thoroughly independent, unbought and unpurchasable, are a safer defense of the rights and liberties of the people, than the constitutional obligations of all the partizans of all parties. But Horace Greeley not only rendered this service of incal culable value to his country by the establishment of The Tribune and the character his genius impressed upon it, making it the most powerful means of political influence which was ever exerted by reason and persuasion and peaceful appeal; but, as we have seen, he also conferred notable benefits upon literature, art, every good reform; encouraged, cheered every attempt at progress in every land; constantly directed all peoples onward and upward ; fearlessly assailed every wrong and every abuse, utterly regardless of personal consequences to the editor; almost daily laboured to prepare the way whereby all peoples may settle national and international disputes, all the while eliminating progress, without appeal to the barbar ism of war; but through the peaceful means of intelligent public opinion. If the sublime polity which Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright have so conspicuously advocated shall be realized: nations learning war no more, injustice and oppres sion giving way to the just rule of democracy: it will be found and cheerfully admitted that in bringing about a consumma tion so greatly to be wished, The New- York Tribune s early and powerful arguments in that behalf were of great and last ing value. 614: LIFE OF HORACE GKEELEY. Such, in briefest outline, were the inestimable services ren dered his country and mankind by Horace Greeley. It will hardly be doubted by the candid that they were greater and better than those which many, if any, of his cotemporaries were able to perform. During all his wonderfully active life, and though the greatest honours were conferred upon him by friends and the widest renown by the world, yet he never ceased for an instant to be the devoted friend of the labouring man, himself ever remaining one of the People plain, unos tentatious, unsophisticated in the indirect ways of the world. He was not a perfect character. He made some mistakes; he was guilty of certain solecisms of speech and of breeding which were unfortunate, but never of any malignity or premeditated unkindness. He was a great, a good, an honest man, whose worse faults were rather those of manner than of character, and whose entire unselfishness, sublime philanthropy, magna nimity more than of the earth, work for man s progress and happiness, make a lesson which can forever be studied with profit; while the triumphs of his wonderful genius can only be appropriately recorded on the pages of that history which shall recount the most important, the most beneficent events in the annals of his country and of his times. APPENDIX. APPENDIX A. MR. GREELEY IN CONGRESS. I. SPEECH ON RECRUITING IN THE ARMY. Reference has been made in the text to a speech made in Congress by Mr. Greeley on recruiting in the Army. The army appropriation bill being under discussion, the official report proceeds : The following item of the bill being under consideration: For expenses of recruiting, thirty -eight thousand and fifty-two dollars. Mr. Greeley moved to strike it out. Mr. G. (in explanation) said he did not believe Government should pay these thirty-eight thousand dollars for the recruting service of the army of the United States. Nothing like that amount of labour was required for this service. He believed, indeed, that an abundant supply of men for the army could be obtained with out the expense of hiring men for the purpose, by merely putting up the flag, as was often done for hiring labourers on. the railroads and other public works. , In this case the Government was to pay thirty-eight thousand dollars for persuading men to serve them. This was done for one of two reasons : either the service itself was improper for men to engage in, or the pay was not what it ought to be. If the service was wrong, it ought to be discontinued ; and if the pay was inadequate, it ought to be increased. There was no service on earth certainly no branch of the public service in this country, in which so much robbery and wrong was perpetrated as in this mattter of recruiting. Recourse was had to intoxication, to fraud to bribing men outside to bring in recruits for the United States army, by continually robbing wives of their husbands, and widows of their sons under circumstances which would ordinarily render the individual liable to indictment for fraud. He wished to inquire a little into this branch of the public expenditures. He had before him a statement of the total cost of war and warlike preparations by this Gov ernment for the last sixty years from 1789 to 1849 and it amounted to the large sum of $685,930,802.27. He did not believe there was any necessity for this large expenditure. The bill proposed to appropriate $5,425.867 for the military service of the United States for the present year; and in the naval appropriation bill it was proposed to set apart for the naval service 9,650,012. Total for warlike preparations, 15,079,878. Now, he desired to compare this with the cost of the military and naval service of the whole period of the eight years of Washington s administration. For the military service it was $9.244.027; for the naval service 10,078,102; total, 19,322,129. From this it appeared that there was now expended for warlike preparations in a single year almost as much as was expended during the whole period of the eight years of Washington s administration. During the four years of the administration of Thomas Jetfersou from 1802 to 1806 upon a retrench ment of the expenditures of his predecessor, the elder Adams, the expenditures for the naval and military service amounted to only $7.956,108. or less than the cost of the naval service alone for the current or ensuing year. During Washington s administration there was an army to be organized and a navy to construct to create; and during the period referred to in Jefferson s administration the country was threatened with foreign wars. Wars were raging everywhere, and the whole world was rocking and tumbling. He considered one of the items of this expenditure. The country was having Indian wars every few years, which were very expensive. But how came it to pass, that Great (617) 618 APPENDIX. Britain, on the north of us, wtih more Indians than we have upon their frontier, expended nothing for Indian wars? He knew not that they had had any disturbance on account of the Indians since 1815. Why was it, then, that we were continually having these wars, whilst our northern neighbours, who were never remarkable for their peaceable temper, had none? He contended, that if one-half of the sum which was now expended by the Government in these Indian wars, were expended in keeping them quiet, instead of driv ing them out of the country, it would operate as an immense saving to the treasury. The war with Mexico furnished a good reason in support of the policy for which he contended. The history of that war showed that our people, taken from the plough and submitted to drill, soon made good soldiers, adequate for an} service whatever. When ever their country called them, right or wrong, they were ready, and they became good soldiers, ready for service within sixty days after they were mustered in. Then why should we go on with this useless system? Why not rather reduce this vast expenditure for the naval and military service, so that the country may be enabled to appropriate more money and engage on a more liberal scale in the new fields of commercial enter prise now opening before us? He hoped the Government would stop recruiting for the army, except for volunteer service; and otherwise reduce the expenses of the military and naval establishments. The President had told us that the present Indian war in Oregon was created by injus tice on our part; and it would have cost but a small part of the expenses now to be incurred on account of this war, to have effectually provided against it before it was begun. And besides, if we had no army, we should not get into these wars at all, except at a few exposed points. Our people would not be so ready to encroach upon the Indians ; they would not act with the same impunity that they now do, if we had no army to back them, (a) II. SLAVERY NEW MEXICO, HER BOTTFTDARY. Remarks of Mr. H. Greeley, of New York, in the House of Representatives, Feb. 26, 1849. On the Bill to provide a Territorial Government for California. The House being in committee of the whole on the state of the Union (Mr. Vinton, of Ohio, in the chair), and having under consideration the bill to provide a territorial gov ernment for the Territory of California; Mr. Greeley addressed the committee as follows: Mr. Chairman: If my speaking now would postpone for one minute the action of the House on this bill, or the progress of business generally, I should hesitate to say one word. I am so anxious to see that business pressed forward that I would cheerfully refrain from speaking if I could thereby come at once to the voting. I want to act, not to talk. For weeks I have maintained entire silence on this floor, only rising to vote or to second the previous question. We have^so much important business yet undone, and. so little time left to do it in, that I grudge every moment devoted to debate. I do not care to explain any vote I shall give, and I do not think my constituents want any speech making from me. But, since this evening is devoted to this debate, and no vote can be taken until to-morrow, I will ask the attention of the committee for a few minutes only. I shall not enter upon any discussion of the character or the influences of slavery. It strikes me that that topic is well nigh exhausted. From the day I entered this Hall to this moment no matter what the bill before us we have had discussions of slavery and nothing else. Slavery in its nature slavery in its effects slavery in the District slavery in the Territories has been the one perpetual theme. In order or out of order generally the latter we have been compelled to listen to it and nothing else. And gentlemen from that section which but a few years since declared and resolved that slavery should not be discussed in Congress that we had no right to discuss it, and (a) Cong. Globe, Vol. 20, pp. 370-71. MR. GKEELEY IN CONGRESS. 619 must hold our peace are now foremost in its discussion, and most eager to have it die- cussed by others. It was but three days since the Post Office appropriation bill being before us that a gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Turner] got the floor and commenced "Mr. Chairman, I propose to give my views on the general subject of slavery "my col league [Mr. Tallmadge] rose and objected to that course of argumentation as irrelevant and out of order. He called attention to our rules, which clearly sustained his objection. But the general cry was " Let him go on ! " and my colleague s appeal was overruled by a large majority, including nearly all the Southern members. Very well, gentlemen ! if you insist on having slavery debated here, you shall have enough of it! I voted to limit the discussion then I shall probably never vote so again. Since the South insists on having slavery discussed here, I certainly shall make no objection. Yet I do not propose now to follow the general example. I think the topic has been worn threadbare, and I care not to pursue it. I shall say nothing about slavery in the abstract, nor of slavery any where but in the new Territories. That subject is now fairly before us. What is the point that divides us? I can only understand it as a question of allowing or forbidding slavery to be planted and legalized in our new Territories. If it is not that, I cannot imagine what it is. To suppose that we have been debating, contending, struggling here for years on a mere punctilio a matter of form or etiquette is most absurd. We on our side, want to keep slavery out of the Territories. That is clear enough. If they, on the other side, do not want to let it in, what do they want? Why are we divided and striving? Does any man imagine that we should have continued to confront each other so resolutely merely to decide whether slavery should be kept out of those Territories or stay out of itself. No, sir; this is a practical question, and as such, to be discussed and decided. In this matter of admitting or excluding slavery there are two parties interested the people of the United States and the people of the Territories themselves. Which of these parties desires the extention of slavery? Do the people of California and New Mexico? We know they do not. (I speak, of course, of the natives of those lands the original and permanent people.) We have authentic information that they earnestly desire the exclusion of slavery. Some of them were slaves themselves, prior to the abolition of slavery by Mexico more than twenty years ago. These, surely, do not desire slavery re-established; they detest, they abhor it. Neither do their former masters desire it they acquiesced cheerfully in the act of emancipation they have never asked its repeal. The whole population of those Territories the indigenous population are intensely anti-slavery. We have a memorial here from a convention of the people of New Mexico unanimously praying our protection against the introduction of slavery. Have they not a right to be heard in regard to this matter? Well, then, the other party interested the people of the United States do they desire the extension of slavery? Will you commit the question to their decision? Mr. Chairman, I will not speak for the slave States, though I do not believe a majority of their people desire to see slavery extended; but with the public sentiment of the free States I profess to be acquainted. And I do confidently assert that there is not one Con gressional district in all the free States which, on a fair, distinct issue, would elect a Representative in favour of extending slavery. But no man is mad enough to give us a trial on this point. All our candidates, no matter of what party, profess to be in favour of free soil. Some reject the Wilmot proviso, but expressly on the ground that it is needless that slavery will never cross the Rio Grande, proviso or no proviso. No man ventures to repudiate it on any other ground. And, Mr. Chairman, I assure the South that the public feeling of the North, is much stronger on this subject than they seem to imagine. The gentleman from North Caro lina [Mr. Tenable], who last spoke, told us Rufus King avowed that this question of extending slavery (in respect to Missouri) was purely a question of political power. I must believe that citation does injustice to Rufus King. But, be that as it may, and even if this were a question of power with politicians, it is very different with the great mass of the people. They may be politicians for the sake of resisting slavery they are not slavery-restrictionists for the sake of power or politics. This Wilmot proviso has been a trouble and a confusion to politicians a thorn and an annoyance which they would gladly have been rid of. They have only moved on this question as they have been 620 APPENDIX. impelled by the resistless force behind them. Politicians may pander to slavery as mer chants trade with it; but the popular heart is sound and thorough. With the great majority of Northern and Western freemen, this is a question, not of politics, but of con victionnot of power, but of conscience. They dare not consent to the extension of slavery. Do not crowd them on this point do not dream you can cajole them do not hope to buy them. You may buy members of Congress with visions of promotion and sudden wealth, but you cannot purchase their constituents. You may outrage, you may arouse them, but you cannot corrupt them. And I assure the representatives of the South on this floor, that supposing it is desirable to them that slavery should longer exist among them, and exert its constitutional power in this Capitol a triumph on this question would be to them a fearful calamity. When I consider what an immense, an almost total revolution in the Northern opinion has been wrought within a few years past, by the annexation of Texas and the resistance on this floor to the right of petition, I warn the champions of slavery not to seek a victory of which the effect must be to shake the firmest pillars of their peculiar institution. I warn them to be wise while it is called to-day. But, Mr. Chairman, I had proposed to discuss mainly another branch of the subject the boundary of New Mexico. I regard that as the most important practical question now before Congess. I do not believe California can ever be other than a free State, proviso or no proviso. Since the question is raised and before us, I shall vote now, as always, for freedom. I will resist any implication that we might consent under any cir cumstances to the extension of slavery will contend against the remotest possibility of such extension. But, while California is shielded by position, by destiny, from the influx of slavery, New Mexico is imminently exposed to it. Three-fourths of her terri tory, nine-tenths at least of her people, are on this side of the Rio Grande in the region audaciously claimed by slaveholding Texas. At this moment Texas is preparing to assert jurisdiction over these distant, conquered, slavery-hating people. She has sent a district attorney to Santa Fe to enforce her laws there she is preparing to sustain his authority by armed force. The triumph of this enterprise will be a present, palpable, practical extension of slavery and slave laws over a region larger than New England. And it will triumph, unless prevented by the action of this Government. The abject, timid, conquered people of New Mexico cannot successfully resist the power of Texas tacitly sustained by the Federal Government. And if this Congress shall separate without pro viding for the protection of that imploring, shrinking, struggling people of New Mexico, I do greatly fear that they will be subjugated by Texas and annexed to her slaveholding domain a crime fit to rank in History with the partition of Poland. And what do Southern gentlemen say to this? The gentleman from Virginia [Gov. McDowell] who so eloquently, pathetically conjured us to act together for harmony, con ciliation, union. what will he say to this? Can he hope to lull us by his eloquence into acquiescence in the subjugation of free New Mexico by slave Texas ? Can he imagine that our constitutents would acquiese in this if we could be induced to? Let him not so deceive himself! And here, Mr. Chairman, is my main ground of objection to all the substitutes pro posed in this House or the other for the territorial bills now legitimately before us. Our committee s bill [Mr. C. B. Smith s] gives New Mexico expressly her ancient and proper boundaries; there is no dodge nor shuffle about it. They organize New Mexico and Cali fornia into territories, and give to each distinct and definite boundaries. None of the substitutes proposed do any such thing. On the contrary, they ail lean the other way. That of the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Preston] proposes to leave the whole matter to the Supreme Court, but it is only appearance. In the first place, it forms all the new territory info one State, to be called what? The State of California. Now, California is properly the name of a small portion of our new acquisitions that portion lying west of the Sierra Nevada and bordering on the Pacific Ocean. Its capital will naturally be San Francisco; and who believes that Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque, will be repre sented in, protected by, a state government whose capital is there ? Who that knows anv thing of the savage deserts and rugged mountains that separate Santa Fe from San Fran- cieco can believe that the former can be properly governed, protected, cared for by state ME. GREELEY IN CONGRESS. 621 anthorities located in the latter? No, sir: this whole State project is contrived to cover the surrender of New Mexico to Texas, and as such I must oppose it to the utmost. And I exhort the friends of the incoming Administration to meet this question in a manly, decided way, for reasons which appeal especially to them. If Congress does not meet this boundary question fully, the new Administration must. If we do not plant the shield of the Union before the people and the liberties of New Mexico, the President must decide to protect or abandon them. We may blink the question, but the Executive cannot. If we do not determine to protect the New Mexican people, the President will soon be entreated to do it, just as Mr. Adams was obliged to protect the Cherokees against Georgia, and as Mr. Tyler was required to interfere in the troubles of Rhode Island. I ask the friends of General Taylor if they choose to involve him in this dilemma. Do thej- wish to force upon him the necessity of deciding to acquiese in the pretensions of Texas to New Mexico, or to heed the prayers of her people and defend them by armed force? Will the South quietly, uuniurmuriugly assent to this? I cannot answer for her, but this I am quite sure of, that if General Taylor shall surrender the people of New Mex ico to the enforced domination of Texas and slavery, he will have no single State in the North or free West to sustain him in that course ; he will not have twenty supporters from the free States on this floor chosen at the election after such action on his part. I entreat, then, his friends on this floor to shield him from responsibility which belongs not to him, but to us, by passing some bill which shall settle definitely the boundary between Texas and New Mexico. The terms of the annexation of Texas require it at our hands; the harmony and peace of the Union, the safety and rights of New Mexico, require it. Let us not shrink from our proper responsibilities, but fearlessly discharge our whole duty. (6) III. "THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS." The full report of the debate which has been well called " the battle of the books " is as follows : Mr. Edwards offered the following amendment: Be it further enacted, That the sums of money appropriated in this bill for books be deducted from the pay of those members who voted for the appropriation. Mr. Edwards, in explanation, said that he had voted in favour of the appropriation, and was of course willing that the amendment should operate upon himself precisely as it would upon any other member. He had no apology to make for the vote he had given. He would send to the Clerk s table The New-York Tribune of January 18, and would request the Clerk to read the paragraph which he (Mr. E.) had marked. The Clerk read the following: "And yet, Mr. Speaker, it has been hinted if not asserted on this floor, that I voted for these Congressional books! I certainly voted against them at every opportunity, when I understood the question. I voted against agreeing to that item of the report of the Committee of the whole in favour of the deficiency bill, and the item prevailing I voted against the whole bill ! I tried to be against them at every opportunity. But it seems that on some stand-up vote in Committee of the whole, when I utterly misunderstood what was the question before the committee, I voted for this item. Gentlemen say I did, and I must presume they are right. I certainly never meant to do so, and I did all in my power in the House to defeat this appropriation. But it is common with me in inci dental and hasty divisions, when I do not clearly understand the point to be decided, to vote with the chairman of the Committee of ways and means (Mr. Vinton), who is so generally right, and who has special charge of appropriation bills, and of expediting business generally. Thus only can I have voted for these books, as on all other occasions I certainly voted against them." (6) App. to the Con. Globe, Vol. 30, pp. 247-8. 622 APPENDIX. The paragraph having been read Mr. Edwards (addressing Mr. Greeley) I wish to inquire of the gentleman from New York, if I am in order, whether that is his editorial ? Mr. Greeley rose The chairman interposed, and said that this was not the subject-matter of debate, not being properly an explanation as prescribed by the rule. The discussion was wholly irrelevant. Mr. Edwards. I have offered my amendment as an additional section to the bill. Mr. Greeley. I certainly think I am entitled to say a word in explanation. [Cries of " Hear him Hear Greeley "with objections.] Mr. Edwards. You are, then, the author of that article? Mr. Greeley. I think I am entitled The Chairman. The gentleman can proceed only by unanimous consent. Gentlemen must see where this will lead to, if irrelevant matters of this kind are allowed to be discussed. Mr. Edwards. I want to know the decision of the Chair upon my motion. Mr. Greeley. I think I am entitled to answer the gentlemen s interrogatory. The Chairman. Every gentleman must see where this will lead, if the discussion is to go on. The Chair thinks it is his duty to restrain discussion within proper limits; and, under the rule, it is clearly improper to go into a discussion in relation to an editorial in any paper, or the personal conduct of a member, or into any matter of that kind. Mr. Edwards. The Chair has misunderstood my motion. Mr. Duer. Cannot the gentleman be heard by unanimous consent? Mr. Edwards appealed from the decision of the Chair. The question, " Shall the decision of the Chair stand as the judgment of the Commit tee?" was taken, and decided in the negative. So the decision of the Chair was reversed. Mr. Greeley said, every gentleman here must remember that that was but the substance of what he had spoken upon this floor. His colleague next him [Mr. Rumsey] had told him, that upon one occasion he (Mr. G.) had voted for the appropriation for books when he did not understand the vote. He (Mr. G.) had voted for tellers when a motion was made to pass the item; but by mistake the chairman passed over the motion for tellers, and counted him in favour of the item. Mr. Edwards. I understand, then, that the gentleman voted without understanding what he was voting upon, and that he would have voted against taking the books had he not been mistaken. Mr. Greeley assented. Mr. Edwards. I assert that that declaration is unfounded in fact. I have the proof that the gentleman justified his vote both before and after the voting. Mr. Greeley called for the proof. Mr. Edwards said he held himself responsible, not elsewhere, but here, to prove that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Greeley] had justified his vote in favour of the books both before and after he gave that vote, upon the ground on which they all justified it, and that this editorial was an afterthought, written because he [Mr. Greeley] had been twit ted by certain newspapers with having voted for the books. He held himself ready to name the persons by whom he could prove it. [Loud cries of "Name them; name them."] Mr. Edwards (responding to the repeated invitations which were addressed to him) said, Charles Hudson, Dr 1 . Darling, and Mr. Putnam. [The excitement was very great, and there was much confusion in all parts of the Hall many members standing in the aisles, or crowding forward to the area and the vicinity of Mr. Greeley.] Mr. Greeley (addressing Mr. Edwards.) 1 say neither of these gentlemen will say so. Mr. Edwards. I hold myself responsible for the proof (addressing Mr. Hudson.) Mr. Hudson will come to the stand. [General laughter.] The Chairman called the Committee to order. Mr. Edwards. I have named the gentlemen. The Chairman again called the Committee to order, and requested gentlemen to take their seats. No motion could be entertained (he said) until order was restored. MK. GEEELEY IN CONGRESS. 623 Mr. Vinton rose, and addressed the Chair. Mr. Greeley. I hope the Committee will not rise until the witnesses have como forward. Mr. Vinton wished to make one word of explanation ; and having moved a pro-forma amendment for the purpose, he proceeded to make a statement with reference to the action of the House at the last session and the present, and the action of the Committee of ways and means and of himself, in reference to the purchase of books. He spoke of the item of about 76,000 which had been included in the deficiency bill for payment for the copies of the Documentary History ordered at the last session. He said he was one of those who, in the last Congress, had very much doubted the expediency of purchasing those books. He referred to the resolution which at this session had been brought up to icscind the resolution of the last session by which the books had been ordered, and said he was one of those who had voted to rescind that resolution the effect of which would have been to have relieved Congress from making the appropriation of some $70,000 or $80,000, which the Clerk of the House estimated to be necessary to carry that resolution into execution. A large majority of the House, however, had thought otherwise, and by their vote had directed the appropriation to be made. He had then, the same day in which this resolution to rescind the previous resolution had been voted down, called upon the Clerk (as he deemed it his duty to do) to give him an estimate of the appropria tion that would be necessary to carry the resolution into effect. He did not consider that he had the right to set up his private opinion against what the House had directed, when they had said, by resolution, that the appropriation should be made. The Clerk had furnished him with the estimate ; he had laid it before the Committee of ways and means, and had reported it under the direction of the Committee, who deemed that, as the organ of the House, they had no right to withhold bills for any appropriations which were demanded by the House, whatever their private opinions might be as to their expedi ency. In this manner, as the organ of the House, he very often reported appropriations which, if he could exercise his judgment as to the expediency of them, he should not report. Mr. Greeley renewed the pro-forma amendment, he said, because an attempt had been made to call gentlemen out in opposition to him, who would not come before this House and say that he had said one word to them in conversation, which was inconsistent with what he had before stated on this floor, or with this article. He presumed the proceed ing was irregular, but other gentlemen had been allowed to attack him, and he wished the same opportunity of defence. Now, these gentlemen who had been named as wit nesses to contradict what he had said in this article, he required, he demanded that they should come forward and say whether there was one word said there which he had con tradicted in private conversation. Mr. Edwards. The gentlemen are on hand. Mr. Greeley. No doubt the House is bound to make the appropriation, but I knew what kind of opposition would be made to me, and I tried to vote against it. Now, if there is any gentleman who will say that he has understood me to say that I voted for it understandingly, I call upon him to come forward Mr. Edwards. The gentleman calls for the testimony. Mr. Hudson is the man Dr. Darling is the man. [Members had again flocked in the area. There were cries of " Hudson, Hudson," " down in front," and great disorder throughout the House.] The Chairman again earnestly called to order; and all proceedings were arrested for the moment in order to obtain order. The House having become partially stilled Mr. Hudson rose and said, I suppose it is not in order for me to address the Committee; but, as I have been called upon, if there is no objection, I have no objection on my part to state what I have heard the gentlemen from New York [Mr. Greeley] say. [Cries from all quarters, " Hear him. Hear him."] The Chairman. If there is no objection, the gentlemau can proceed. No objection being made Mr. Hudson said, I can say, then, that on a particular day, when this book resolution had been before the House as it was before the House sev eral times I cannot designate the day, but one day when we had been passing upon the 624: APPENDIX. question of books, in walking from the Capitol, I fell in with my friend from New York [Mr. Greeley] ; that we conversed from the Capitol down on to the avenue in relation to these books; that he stated as I understood him (and I think I could not have been mistaken) that he was in favour of the purchase of the books ; that he either had or should vote for the books, and he stated two reasons: the one was, that some of these publica tions were of such a character that they would never be published unless there was some public patronage held out to the publishers; and the other reason was. that the other class of these books at least contained important elements of history, which would be lost unless gathered up and published soon, and as the distribution of these books was to diffuse the information over the community, he was in favour of the purchase of the books ; and that he himself had suffered from not having access to works of this char acter. That was the substance 01 the conversation. Mr. Hudson having concluded [There were cries of "Darling, Darling."] Mr. Darling rose, and (no objection being made) proceeded to say: On one of the days on which we voted for the books now in question the day that the appropriation passed the House I was on my way from the Capitol, and passing down the steps I accidently came alongside the gentleman from New York [Mr. Greeley], who was in conversation with another gentleman a member of the House whose name I do not recollect. I heard him [Mr. G.] say he justified the appropriation for the books to the members, on the ground of their diffusing general information. He said, that in the city of New- York he knew of no place where he could go to obtain the information contained in these books; that although it was supposed that in that place the sources of information were much greater than in almost any other portion of the country, he would hardly know where to go in that city to find this information; and upon this ground that he would support the resolution in favour of the books. This conversation, the gentleman will recollect, took place going down from the west door of the Capitol and before we got to the avenue. I do not now recollect the gentleman who was with the gentleman from New York. Mr. Putnam rose amid loud cries of invitation, and no objection being made, said: As my name has been referred to in relation to this question, it is due perhaps to the gentle man from New York [Mr. Greeley], that I should state this : That some few days since the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Edwards] called upon me here, and inquired of me whether I had heard my colleague [Mr. Greeley] say any thing in relation to his vote as to the books. I that morning had received the paper, and I referred him to the editorial con tained therein which has been read by the Clerk, but I have no recollection of stating to the gentleman from Ohio that I heard my colleague say he justified the vote which he gave; nor have 1 any recollection whatever that I ever heard my colleague say any thing upon the subject after the vote given by him. The gentleman from Ohio must have misunderstood me, and it is due my colleague that this explanation should be made. [Several voices: "What did he say before the vote?"] I have no recollection (said Mr. P.) that I ever heard him say any thing. Mr. Edwards rose, and wished to know if any of his five minutes was left? No reply was heard; but, after some conversation (being allowed to proceed), he said, 1 have stated that I have no apologies to make for giving this vote. I voted for these books for the very reasons which the gentleman from New York [Mr. Greeley] gave to these witnesses. I stated that I could prove by witnesses that the gentleman has given reasons of this kind, and that that editorial was an afterthought. If the House requires any more testimony, it can be had; but out of the mouths of two witnesses he is con demned. That is scriptural as well as legal. I have not risen to retaliate for any thing this editor has said in reference to this sub ject of mileage. I have been classed among those who have received excessive mileage. I travelled in coming to Washington forty-three miles further than the committee paid me; but I stated before the committee the reasons why I made the change Of route. I had been capsized once The Chairman interposed, and said he felt bound to arrest this debate. [Cries of " Greeley! Greeley! "] Mr. Greeley rose ME. GBEELEY IN CONGRESS. 625 The Chairman stated that it would not he in order for the gentleman to address the Honse while there was no question pending. [Cries of " Suspend the rules ; hear him."] Mr. Tallmadge rose and inquired if his colleague could not proceed by general consent? The Chairman replied in the affirmative. No objection was made, and Mr. Greeley proceeded. The gentleman from Massachu setts [Mr. Hudson] simply misunderstood one thing. He states me to have urged the considerations which he urged to me. He urged these considerations and I think forcibly. I say now, as I did the other day on the floor of this House, I approve of the appropriation for the books, provided they are honestly disposed of according to the intent of the appropriation. Mr. Edwards. Why, then, did you make the denial in the Tribune and say that you voted against it? Mr. Greeley. I did vote against it. I did not vote for it, because I did not choose to have some sort of gentlemen on this floor hawk at me. The gentleman from Massachu setts [Mr. Hudson] submitted considerations to me, of which I admitted the force. I admit them now; I admit that the House was justifiable in voting for this appropriation, for the reasons ably stated by the Chairman of the Committee of ways and means ; and I think I was justifiable, as this Hall will show, in not voting for it. In no particular was there collision between what I said on this floor, the editorial, and what I said In con versation. The conversation to which the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Darling] refers is doubtless the same of which the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Hudson] has spoken. 40 APPENDIX B. MR. GREELEY ON THE PLATFORM. I. HUMANITY. The volume Hints Towards Reforms from which several extracts in this work have been made concludes with the subjoined essay on "Humanity." The watchword of the Nineteenth Century is Brotherhood. Rapid and wonderftil SB is the progress of Physical Science valuable to Man as are the Steamboat, the Ka 1- road, the Magnetic Telegraph mighty as are the results attained, mightier the hope.- excited and justified, by the march of discovery and invention the great discovery- being made, and to be made by the children of men, is that of their community of origin, of interests, of aspirations. " God hath made of one blood all people," is its essence T proclaimed many years ago; the new truth is but the old realized and made practical. Humanity refuses longer to be separated and arrayed against itself. Whoever oppresses or injures any human being, however abject or culpable, wrongs and tramples all men, himself included. A grave, momentous truth let it be heard and heeded. Hear it, grim and ruthless warrior! eager to rush over myriads of gashed and writhing bodies to coveted fame and power 1 These thou wouldst so readily trample into the earth are not really enemies, not merely victims not something which maybe separated from thee and thine: they are thy fellows, kinsmen, brethren with thee, "members of one another," and of Human ity. The sword which hews them down, maims thee; the hoof that tramples them, wounds thee. No armour ever devised by cunning or selfishness can prevent this; no walls of stone or living men can ward off the blow. As surely as the verdant tree must mark its shadow in the sunshine as surely as the stone projected upward will not rest in mid-air, but descend so surely falls the evil on him by whom evil is done or meditated. Miser! heaping up fresh hoards of yellow dross! thou art starving, not others only, but thyself! Bread may fill thy garners, and thy vaults be stored with ruddy wines; but Plenty cannot come where dwells the insatiable thirst for more ; and baleful are the pos sessions which contract the brow and hasden the heart; speedy and sure is the judgment which avenges the woes of thy pale, hollow-cheeked victims ! Libertine! believe not that the anguish thou so recklessly invokest on others shall leave thee unscathed! The contrary is written in the law whose date is Eternity, whose sphere the Universe. Fleeting and hollow are the guilty joys thou seekest, while the crimes by which they are compassed shall darken thy soul and embitter thy thoughts for ever! And thou, humble self-denying votary of the highest good the good of thy brethren, thy fellow beings vainly shall thou strive to sacrifice thy own happiness to brighten the dark pathway of the needy, the wretched ; the kindly fates will not permit it ; Heaven will persist in promptly repaying thee more and better than thou hast given. Give all thou hast to lighten the burdens of others to-day, and the bounteous reward will not wait for to-morrow s sun. It will insist on making thee richer, in thy hunger and nakedness, than the king amid his pomp, the banker amid his treasures. Thy riches are safe from every device of villainy, from every access of calamity; they cannot be separated from (626) MR. GREELEY ON THE PLATFORM. 627 nor made unavailable to thee. While thou art, they shall be to thee a chastened glad ness, a tranquil rapture for ever ! And thou, saintly devotee, and shrine of all virtues! look not down in loathing, but in pity, on the ruined votary of vice and crime. He is here to teach thee not pride, but humility. The corrupt, revolting thing he is, tells thee what thou mightest easily have been, had not Divine Goodness, for its own high ends, not thine, willed otherwise. The drunkard s maudlin leer the lecher s marred and hideous visage the thief s cat-like tread and greedy eyes even the murderer s strong heart and reeking hand all these, rightly viewed, are but indications of the possibilities of thy own nature, commanding gratitude to God, and compassion for all human errors. Ay, "we are members together of one body" of Humanity, whether blackened by the fervid sun of tropical deserts, or bleached by the fogs of a colder clime whether wor shiping God or the Grand Lama, erecting Christian altars in the savage wilderness or falling in frenzy beneath the wheels of Juggernaut whether acting the part of a Wash ington or a Nicholas, a Howard or a Thug the same red current courses through all our veins the same essential nature reveals itself through all. The slave in his coffle, the overseer brandishing his whip, the abolitionist denouncing oppression who shall say that any one of these might not have been trained to do the deeds and think the thoughts of any other? who shall say that the red-handed savage of the wilds might not have been the meek, benign village pastor, blessing and blest by all around him, if his lot had been cast in Vermont instead of Oregon? who shall say how far his crimes are treasured up against him in the account, and how far they are charged to the perverting, darkening force of Christian rapacity and fraud, or esteemed the result of a Christian indifference and lethargy only less culpable? Away then from human sight with the hideous implements of human butchery and destruction ! Break the sword in its scabbard, bury the cannon in the earth, sink the boombs in the ocean ! What business have these to disturb by their hateful presence the visible harmony of God s universe? How dare men go out into the balmy air and bright sunshine, and there, in the full view of Heaven, essay to maim and massacre each other? How would their wretched babblement of National interests or National honour sound, if addressed directly to the All-Ruling, as an apology for wholesale slaughter? Who would dare be their mouthpiece in proffering an excuse so pitiful? And do not the abet tors of war realize that their vile appeals to the baser passions of our nature resound in the ears of the Recording Angel? But not war alone, the grossest form of human antagonism, but every form, is destined to a speedy extinction. The celestial voice that asked of old the terrific question, " where is thy brother Abel?" shall yet be heard and responded to by every one who would win profit or enjoyment from that which oppresses or degrades a single human being. The oppressor, the dram-seller, the gamester, are already beginning to listen, perforce, to its searching appeal listen, at first, perhaps, with frowns, and sneers, and curses; but even these are symptoms of the inward convulsion first mutterings of the mighty earthquake at hand. In the day of light now dawning, no relation so palpably vicious as theirs can possibly abide. But theirs are the rude, salient out-works, which cover, while they withstand, the smoother, ampler, sturdier citadel of error. That all-pervading selfishness, which forgets or disregards the general well-being, is yet to be tracked to its most secret recesses, and extirpated. The vocations of Life, the usages and structure of Society, the relations of power to Humility, of Wealth to Poverty, of served and Servant, must all be fused in the crucible of Human Brotherhood, and whatever abides not the test, rejected. Vainly will any seek to avert or escape the ordeal idly will any hope to preserve from it some darling lust or pampered luxury or vanity. Onward, upward, irresistibly, shall move the Spirit of Reform, abasing the proud, exalting the lowly, until Sloth and Selfishness, Tyranny and Slavery, Waste and Want, Ignorance and Corruption, shall be swept from the face of the earth, and a golden age of Knowledge, of Virtue, of Plenty, and Happiness, shall dawn upon our sinning and suffering Race. Heaven speed its glorious coming and prepare us to welcome and enjoy it! APPENDIX. II. THE UNION OF WORKEBS. An Address to the Printers of New-York, delivered before the New- York Typographical Society, at their Celebration of Franklin s Birthday, January 17th, 1850. The ancient Egyptians had a custom of seating at their feasts the robed skeleton of some departed friend, whose stern silence contrasted strikingly with the mirth and hilarity of his living companions. I believe scholars are not agreed as to the purpose and meaning of this strange custom whether the rigid, silent guest were intended to say to the festal throng " Enjoy and revel while you may, for Time flies, Man perishes ; in a few years all is dust, is nothing therefore, make haste to quaff the wine while it sparkles, to seize pleasure while the capacity of enjoyment remains to you" or rather to impress the opposite sentiment "Life is short; Life is earnest; stupendous conse quences hang suspended on your use or abuse of the speck of time allotted you ; therefore, be temperate in your indulgence, moderate in your festive mirth, and, seeing in what i am what you soon must be, consider and beware!" I shall not of course pretend to decide this grave question, though I shall assume for the occasion that the latter is the true rendering; and, in acccordance with the elemental idea, I venture to assume among you to-night the functions of the Egyptian s silent monitor, and while others stir you with lofty eloquence or charm you with dulcet flatteries with pictures of the grand achievements of our Art in the past and its brilliant prospects for the future, 1 shall speak to you frankly of our deficiencies, our failings, and the urgent demands upon us for new and more arduous exertions in yet unrecognized fields of duty. It is now some four centuries since the discovery or invention of our Art, fully three since our continent began to be the home of civilized men, and more than two since the Pilgrim fugitives first landed on Plymouth Rock. Since that landing, and even with in the last century, what amazing strides have been made in the diffusion of knowledge and the perfection of the implements and processes of Industry in the efficiency of Human Labour and the facilitation of intercourse between country and country, clime and clime I The steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the power-loom; the canal, the steam-ship, power-press, railroad and lightning telegraph these, in their present perfec tion and efficiency, are a few of the trophies of human genius and labour within even the last century. * But while Labour has thus doubled and quadrupled its own efficacy in the production 1 of whatever is needful to the physical sustenance, intellectual improvement, and social I enjoyment of Men, I do not find that there has been a corresponding melioration in the condition of the Labourer. That there hag been some improvement I do not deny; but ;.a* it hem at all commensurate with the general progress of our race in whatever per tains to physical convenience or comfort? I think not; and I could not help pondering this matter even while our orator s silvery tones were delighting our ears with poetical descriptions of the wonders which Science and Invention hare achieved and are achiev ing. I could not help consider that, wh^le Labour builds far more sumptuous mansions in our day than of old, furnishing them far more gorgeously and luxuriously, the labourer who builds those mansions lives oftenest in a squalid lodging, than which the builders of palaces in the fifteenth century can hardly have dwelt in more wretched ; and that /while the demands for labour, the uses of labour, the efficiency of labour, are multiplied | and extended on every side by the rush of invention and the growth of luxury around us, yet in this middle of the Nineteenth Century (call it the last year of the first half or the first year of the last half as you please) Labour is a drug in the market that the tern- : perate, efficient, upright worker often finds the comfortable maintenance and proper education of his children beyond his ability and that in this thriving Commercial Emporium of the New World, this trophy and pride of Christian Civilization there are at this day not less than Forty Thousand human beings anxious to earn the bread of honest industry but vainly seeking, and painfully, despairingly awaiting opportunity for so doing. This last is the feature of our condition which seems to me most important MK. GEEELEY ON THE PLATFORM. 629 and commanding, and it is to this, on occasions like the present, and in listening to such orations as that which has just delighted us, that my thoughts are irresistibly turned. What can be the reason of this ? Why is it that these Forty Thousand strong-minded, willing workers stand here thus fixed, enchained, in loathed, despairing idleness? Why aro they compelled to wear out our pavements in hurrying hither and thither m anxious, hcirt-sick quest of something to do? with downcast looks and trembling voice beseech ing some fellow-man to give them leave to labour for their bread? I trust no one here gives any heed to the mumbling of self-styled Political Economists about " Over Produc tion " and the kindred phrases with which counsel is darkened. " Over Production " of what? Where? Can there be over-production of Food, when so many, even in our midst, are suffering the pangs of famine? "Over-Production " of Clothing and Fabrics, while our streets swarm with men, women and children who are not half-clad and who shiver through the night beneath the clothing they have worn by day? "Over Production" of Dwellings, when not half the families of our city have adequate and comfortable habi tations, not to speak of that large class whose lodgings are utterly incompatible with decency and morality? No, friends ! there is no " Over Production," save of articles per nicious aud poisonous, like Alcoholic Liquors, Lewd Books, implements of Gaming, &c. Of whatever conduces to human sustenance, comfort, or true education, there is not and never has been too much produced, although, owing to imperfect and vicious arrange ments for Distribution, there may often be a glut in the warehouses of Trade, while ids greatly need and would gladly purchase if they could. What the world emi nently requires is some wise adjustment, some remodeling of the Social machinery, diminishing its friction whereby every person willing to work shall assuredly have work to do, and the just reward of that work in the articles most essential to his sustenance and comfort. It may be that there is indeed a surplus of that particular product which fan s labour could most skilfully or rapidly produce Pianos, Watches, or Gauges for example and therefore it may be advisable to intermit for a season the production of these yet the skill, the faculty, the muscular energy not required in that particular department of production might nevertheless be made available, even though in a subor dinate degree, in the fabrication of some kindred product for which there is a demand among the general mass of consumers. I maintain, then, that in our day no man should be compelled to stand idle or wander vainly in search of employment, even though that particular calling for which he is best fitted has now no place for him, but that the pal pable self interest of the community should prescribe the creation of some Social Providence expressly to take care that no man, woman, or child shall ever stand uselessly idle when willing and anxious to work. Even the most injudicious application of the labour now wasted through lack of opportunity could not fail to increase the National Wealth to the extent of millions on millions per annum while its effect on the condition of the Labouring Class, in preserving them from temptation, dissipation, and crime, would be incalculably beneficent. Now what I stand here to complain of is the indifference and inattention of the Labouring mass, and especially of those entitled to a leading positon in it, like the Printers, to the discussion of a truth so grand and so fruitful as the Right to Labour. It is more discussed, more pondered, to-day, by Merchants, Capitalists, Scholars, and men who are called Aristocrats, than by the mass of those who earn their living by the sweat of the face. It is now eighteen years since I came to this city a journeyman printer, during which years I have been intimately connected with our craft in one capacity or \ another, and yet I have never heard of a meeting of Printers to consider and discuss the I Rights generally of Labour, the causes of its depression, the means of its advancement, j During these eighteen years there have been hard times and good times, so called; sea- 1 sons of activity and seasons of depression in the course of which the country has been \ "saved," I forget how often our city has doubled in population and more than doubled in wealth and yet the Labouring Class as a Class is just where .it was when I came here, or if anything, in a worse condition, as the increased valuation of Property has caused advance in Rents and in some other necessaries of life. Individuals have risen -. out of the Labouring Class, becoming buyers of Labour and sellers of its Products, and " grown rich thereby ; but the condition of the Labouring Class, as such, has not improved, and I think is less favourable than it was twenty years ago. Why should it not invest!- 630 APPENDIX. gate, determine, and develope the causes of this? Why not consider the practicability of securing Work and Homes to all willing to work for them? Can we imagine that improvement is to come without effort or even inquiry? Is it the order of Nature or of Providence that it should? Do blessings come to other classes without foresight or cal culation? I have heard complaints that Machinery and Invention do not work for the Labouring Class, but rather against them. Concede the assumption, and is not the inquiry a fair one? What has the Labouring Class ever done to make Machinery work in its favour? When has it planned, or sought, or calculated, to render Machinery its ally and aid rather than its enemy and oppressor? I am here to-night to tell you that you, and our Trade, and the Labouring Class of our City have been glaringly unfaithful in this respect to yourselves, your posterity, and your . Eace, and that the Workers of Paris, for example, are in advance of their brethren here in knowledge of and devotion to the interests and rights of Labour. And I am here not to find fault merely, but to exhort you to awake from your apathy and heed the summons of fTnrty. I stand here, friends, to urge that a new leaf be now turned over that the 4 Labouring Class, instead of idly and blindly waiting for better circumstances and better I times, shall begin at once to consider and discuss the means of controlling circumstances / and commanding times, by study, calculation, foresight, union. We have heard to-night of a Union of Printers and a Printers Library, for which latter one generous donation has been proffered. I have little faith in giving as a remedy for the woes of mankind, and not much in any effort for the elevation or improvement of any one section of Pro ducers of Wealth in our City. What I would suggest would be the union and organiza?ion of all Workers for their mutual improvement and benefit, leading to the erection of a spacious edifice at some central point in our City to form a Labourers Exchange, just as Commerce now has its Exchange, very properly. Let the new Exchange be erected and owned as a joint-stock property, paying a fair dividend to those whose money erected it; let it contain the best spacious Hall for General Meetings to be found in our City, with smaller Lecture-Kooms for the meetings of particular sections or callings all to be leased or rented at fair prices to all who may choose to hire them, when not needed for the primary purpose of discussing and advancing the interests of Labour. Let us have here books opened, wherein any one wanting work may inscribe his name, residence, capacities, and terms, while any one wishing to hire may do likewise, as well as meet personally those seeking employment. These are but hints toward a few of the uses which such a Labour Exchange might subserve, while its Reading-Room and Library, easily formed and replenished, should be open freely and gladly to all. Such an edifice, rightly planned and constructed, might become, and I confidently hope would become, a most important instrumentality in the great work of advancing the Labouring Class in comfort, intelligence, and independence. I trust we need not long await its erection. III. TOBACCO. Letter to Messrs. O. S. & L. N. Fowler. GENTLEMEN: Yon ask me for a statement of what I know and think respecting tobacco. I have had a good deal of experience on this subject; in fact, I once smoked nearly an inch of cigar myself. It served me right, and I have never since had an incli nation to outrage human nature and insult decency in any such way. I was then somo s x years old, and naturally aspiring to the accomplishments of manhood and gentility; but the lesson I then received will suffice for my whole life, though it should be spun out to the length of Methuselah s. I have since endured, my share of the fumigations and kindred abominations of tobacco; but I have inflicted none. I wish some budding Elia, not a slave to narcotic sensualism, would favour us with an essay on "The Natural Affinities of Tobacco with Blackguardism." The materials for it are abundant, and you have but to open your eyes (or nostrils) in any city promenade (glorious Boston excepted), in any village bar-room, to find yourself confronted by them. ME. GBEELEY ON THE PLATFORM. 631 Is Broadway sunny yet airy, with the atmosphere genial and inviting, so that fair maid ens (and the observing bachelors) throng the two-shilling sidewalk, glad to enjoy and not unwilling to be admired? Hither (as Satan into Paradke. but not half so gentlemanly) hie the host of tobacco-smoking loafers, to puff their detested fumes into the faces and eyes of abhorring purity and lovliness, to spatter the walk, and often soil the costly and delicate dresses of the promenaders with their vile expectorations. And, even should the smokers forbear to besmear the outraged but patiently-enduring flag-stones with their foul saliva, the chewers will not be far behind (as the Revelator saw "Death on the pale horse, and Hell following after") industriously polluting the fair face of earth, as their precursors have poisoned the sweet breath of heaven. How long, oh I how long, must all this be suffered? I have intimated that the tobacco-consumer is not indeed necessarily and inevitably, but naturally and ususally a blackguard; that chewing or smoking obviously tends to blackguardism. Can any man doubt it? Let him ride with uncorrnpted senses in the stage or omnibus, which the chewer insists on defiling with the liquid product of his incessant labours, seeming unconscious of his utter offensiveness, and which even the smoker, especially if partly or wholly drunk, will also insist on transforming into a minature Tophet by his exhalations, defying alike the express rule of the coach and the sufferer s urgent remonstrances, if he can only say, "why there s no lady here." ["No ladies " is his expresson, but the plea is execrable enough, though expressed grammat ically.] Go into a public gathering, where a speaker of delicate lungs, and an invincible repulsion to tobacco, is trying to discuss some important topic so that a thousand men can hear and understand him, yet whereinto ten or twenty smokers have introduced themselves, a long-nine projecting horizontally from beneath the nose of each, a fire at one end, and a fool at the other, and mark how the puff, puffing gradually transforms the atmosphere (none too pure at best) into that of some foul and pestilential cavern, chok ing the utterance of the speaker, and distracting (by annoyance) the attention of the hearers, until the argument is arrested or its effect utterly destroyed. If he who will selfishly, recklessly, impudently, inflict so much discomfort and annoyance on many, in order that he may enjoy in a particular place an indulgence which could as well be enjoyed where no one else would be affected by it, be not a blackguard, who can be? What could indicate bad breeding and a bad heart, if such conduct does not? "Breth ren!" said Parson Strong, of Hartford, preaching a Connecticut election sermon, in high party times, some fifty years ago, "it has been charged that I have said every Democrat is a horse-thief: I never did. What I did say was only that every horse-thief is a Demo crat, and that I can prove." So I do not say that every smoker or chewer is necessarily a blackguard, however steep the proclivity that way; but show me a genuine blackguard one of the b hoys, and no mistake who is not a lover of tobacco in some shape, and I will agree to find you two white black-birds. HORACE GKBELKY. IV. TEMPERATE DRINKING. From a pamphlet upon "Alcoholic Liquors: their Essential Nature and Necessary Effects on the Human Constitution," prepared by request of the National Division of the Sons of Temperance, and published in 1849. I have aimed to demonstrate the physical evils of Temperate Drinking (as it is improp erly called, since no drinking of liquids essentially poisonous fo"r the sake of a sensual gratification can be truly Temperate) by other considerations than those connected with Drunkenness. It is very true that he who drinks, however moderately, is in danger of dying a drnnkard; but if there were no such thing as drunkenness it would still be most unwise and culpable to drink. Indeed it has been forcibly argned that the physical evils of drinking would be greater if drunkenness were unknown. Inebriety dethrones the 632 APPENDIX. reason, often making of a naturally inoffensive, good-natured man, a furious, raging fiend ; but it does not orignate the mischief it rather serves to expel and finish it. It is the demoniac spirit tearing his victim because commanded to come out of him. Thou sands die prematurely every year in consequence of drinking who never were thoroughly drunk in their lives. One man drinks three glasses and loses his reason ; another drinks six, or even ten, and seems wholly unaffected. Men say of the latter, "He has a strong head ; " and cigar-puffing wine-bibbing youngsters are apt to envy him ; yet he is far more likely to die in consequence of drinking than his neighbour whom three glasses knock over. The former retains the poison in his system, and it silently preys upon him; in the latter, Nature revolting at the deadly poison, makes a convulsive effort and throws it off. He is damaged by the liquor, but not by its ejectment, whatever he may fancy. Intoxication is a kindly though ungentle ministration whose object is relief and recovery. Drinking is not evil because it produces Intoxication, but Intoxication is ordained to limit the physical evils of Drinking. Let no free drinker, therefore, glory in his ability to drink much without Intoxication; for, in the natural course of events, he will need his coffin much sooner than if liquor easily overcame him. If the propositions affirmed in this essay be true, how can any youth read them and yet become or continue a drinker of Alcoholic Liquors? Banish, if you can, all thought of God and His judgments forget or deny your immortality deride the idea of restricting or qualifying your own gratification for the sake of kindred, friends, country or race regard yourself merely as an animal that has happened here to sport a brief summer, then utterly perish and still is it not a palpable mistake to drink anything that intoxicates? Why should it intoxicate if it be not essentially a poison? Is there any other substance claimed to be innocent and wholesome in moderate quantities which drowns the reason if the amount taken be increased? Why seek enjoyment in such a perilous and dubious way a path paved with the bones of millions after millions who have fallen in pursuing it when innocent and healthful pleasures everywhere surround and invite you? Lived there ever a human being who regretted at death that he had through life refrained from the use of stimulating drinks? and how countless the millions who have with reason deplored such use as the primary, fatal mistake of their lives? Surely, from the radiant heavens above us, the dust once quickened beneath us, comes to the attentive ear a voice which impressively admonishes, BE WISE WHILE IT is CALLED TO-DAY. V. UNIVERSAL EDUCATION. Mr. Greeley s lecture upon "Teachers and Teaching" concluded with the following paragraphs. Universal education! grand inspiring idea! And shall there come a time when the delver in the mine and the rice-swamp, the orphans of the prodigal and the felon, and even the very offspring of shame, shall be-truly, systematically educated? Glorious con summation ! morning twilight of the Millennium ! who will not joyfully labour and court sacrifices, and suffer reproach, if he may hasten, by even so much as a day, its blessed coming? Who will not take courage from a contemplation of what the last century haa seen accomplished, if not in absolute results, yet in preparing the approaches, in remov ing impediments, in correcting and expanding the popular comprehension of the work to be done and the feasibility of doing it? Whatever of evil and of suffering the Future may have in store for us though the earth be destined yet to be plowed by the sword and fertilized by human gore until rank growths of the deadliest weeds shall overshadow it, stifling into premature decay every plant most conductive to health or fragrance the time shall surely come when universal and true Education shall dispel the dense night of ignorance and perverseness that now enshrouds the vast majority of the Human- Race shall banish evil and wretchedness almost wholly from earth by removing or unmasking the multiform temptations to wrong-doing shall put an end to Robbery, Hatred, Oppression, and War, by diffusing widely and thoroughly a living consciousness ME. GKEELEY ON THE PLATFORM. 633 of the Brotherhood of Mankind, and the sure blessedness as well as righteousness of doing ever as we would have others do to us. " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it; " such is the promise which enables us to see to the end of the dizzy whirl of wrong and misery in which our race has so long sinned and suffered. On wise and systematic training, based on the widest knowledge, the truest morality, and tending ever to universal good as the only assurance of special or personal well-being, rests the great hope of the terrestial renovation and elevation of man. Not the warrior then, nor the statesman, nor yet the master-worker, as such, but the teacher, in our day leads the vanguard of Humanity. Whether in the seminary or by the way-side, by uttered word or printed page, our true king is not he who best directs the siege or sets his squadrons in the field, or heads the charge, but he who can and will instruct and enlighten his fellows, so that at least some few of the generation of whom he is, shall be wiser, purer, nobler for his living among them, and prepared to carry for ward the work of which he was a humble instrument to its far grander and loftier con summation. O far above the conqueror of kingdoms, the destroyer of hosts by the sword and the bayonet, is he whose tearless victories redden no river and whiten no plain, but who leads the understanding a willing captive and builds his empire not of the wretched and bleeding fragments of subjugated nations, but on the realms of intellect which he has discovered and planted and peopled with beneficent activity and enduring joy! The mathematician who in his humble study, undisturbed as yet by the footsteps of monarchs and their ministers, demonstrates the existence of a planet before unsuspected by astronomy, unobserved by the telescope ; the author who from his dim garret sends forth the scroll which shall constrain thousands on thousands to laugh or weep at his will who topples down a venerable fraud by an allegory, or crushes a dynasty by an epigram he shall live and reign over a still expanding dominion when the paste-board kings whose steps are counted in court circulars and timed by stuped huzzas shall have long since mouldered and been forgotten. To build out into chaos and drear vacuity to render some corner of the primal darkness radient with the presence of an idea to supplant ignorance by knowledge and sin by virtue such is the mission of our age, wortny to enkindle the ambition of the loftiest, yet proffering opportunity and reward to the most lowly. To the work of universal enlightenment be our lives henceforth conse crated, until the black clouds of impending evil are irradiated and dispersed by the full effulgence of the divinely predicted day, " when all shall know the Lord from the least unto the greatest," and when wrong and woe shall vanish forever from the presence of universal knowledge, purity, and bliss I VI. HORACE GKEELEY S SOCIALISM. The following is the full text of the first of Mr. Greeley s articles in The Tribune, in his celebrated discussion with Mr. Raymond on the subject of Socialism. THE RIGHT TO LABOUR. " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The earth, the air, the waters, the sunshine, with their natural products, were divinely intended and appointed for the use and sustenance of man (Gen. i: 26, 28) not for a part only, but for the whole Human Family. Civilized Society, as it exists in our day, has divested the larger portion of mankind of the unimpeded, unpurchased enjoyment of their natural rights. That larger portion may be perishing with cold, yet have no legally recognized right to a stick of decaying fuel in the most unfrequented morass, or may be famishing, yet have no legal right to pluck and eat the bitterest acorn in the depths of the remotest wilderness. The defeasance or confiscation of man s natural right to use any portion of the Earth s surface not actually in use by another, is an important fact, to 634 APPENDIX. tie kept in view in every consideration of the duty of the affluent and comfortable to the poor and unfortunate. It is not essential iu this place to determine that the divestment of the larger number of any recognized right to the Soil and its Products, save by the purchased permission of others, was or was not politic and necessary. All who reflect must certainly admit that many of the grants of land by hundreds of square miles to this or that favourite of the power which assumed to make them were made thoughtlessly or recklessly, and would not have been so large or so unaccompanied with stipulations in behalf of the future occupants and cultivators, if a reasonable foresight and a decent regard for the general good had been cherished and evinced by the granting power. Suffice it here, however, that the granting of the Soil of the State of New York, for example by the supreme authority representing the whole to a minor portion of the whole is a "fixed fact." By a Law of Nature, every person born in the State of New York had (unless for feited by crime) a perfect right to be here, and to his equal share of the Soil, the woods, the waters, and all the natural products thereof. By the law 01 Society, all but the poses- sors of title deeds exist here only by the purchased permission of the land-owning class, and were intruders and trespassers on the soil of their nativity without that permission. By law, the landless have no inherent right to stand on a single square foot of the State of New York except in the highways. The only solid ground on which this surrender of the original property of the whole to a minor portion can be justified is that of Public Good the good, not of a part, but of a whole. The people of a past generation, through their rulers, claimed and exercised the right of divesting, not themselves merely, but the majority of all future generations, of their original and inherent right to possess and cultivate any unimproved portion of the soil of our State for their own sustenance and benefit. To render this assumption of power valid to the fearful extent to which it was exercised, it is essential that it be dem onstrated that the good of the whole was promoted by such exercise. Is this rationally demonstrable now? Can the widow, whose children pine and shiver in some bleak, miserable garret, on the fifteen or twenty cents, which is all she can earn by unremitted toil, be made to realize that she and her babes are benefitted by or in con sequence of the granting to a part an exclusive right to use the earth and enjoy its fruits? Can the poor man who day after day paces the streets of a city in search of any employ ment at any price (as thousands are now doing here), be made to realize it on his part? Are there not thousands on thousands natives of our State who never wilfully violated her laws who are to-day far worse ofl than they would have been if Nature s rule of allowing no man to appropriate to himself any more of the earth than he can cultivate and improve had been recognized and respected by society? These questions admit of but one answer. And one inevitable consequence of the prevailing system is that, as Population increases and Arts are perfected, the income of the wealthy owner of land increases while the recompense of the hired or leasehold cultivator is steadily diminish ing. The labour of Great Britain is twice as effective now as it was a century ago, but the labourer is worse paid, fed, and lodged than he then was, while the incomes of the landlord class have been enormously increased. The same fundamental causes exist here, and tend to the same results. They have been modified, thus far, by the existence, within or near our State, of large tracts of unimproved land, which the owners were anxious to improve or dispose of on almost any terms. These are growing scarcer and more remote; they form no part of the system we are considering, but something which exists in opposition to it, which modifies it, but is absolutely sure to be ultimately absorbed and conquered by it. The notorious fact that they do serve 10 mitigate the exactions to which the landless mass, even in our long and densely settled towns and cities, are sub ject, serves to show that the condition of the great mass must inevitably be far worse than at present when the natural consummation of land-selling is reached, and all the soil of the Union has become the property of a minor part of the People of the Union. The past can not be recalled. What has been rightfully (however mistakenly) done by the authorized agents of the State or Nation, can only be retracted upon urgent public necessity, ana upon due satisfaction to all whose private rights are thereby invaded. But those wno nave been divested of an important, a vital natural right, are also entitled to compensation. The Right to Labour, secured to them in the creation of the earth, MR. GEEELEY ON THE PLATFOKM. 635 taken away in the granting of the Soil to a minor portion of them, must be restored. Labour, essential to all, is the inexorable condition of the honest independent subsis tence of the Poor. It must be fully guaranteed to all, so that each may know that he can never starve nor be forced to beg while willing and able to work. Our public pro vision for Pauperism is but a halting aud wretched substitute for this. Society exercises no paternal guardianship over the poor man until he has surrendered to despair. He may spend a whole year and his little all in vainly seeking employment, and all this time Society does nothing, cares nothing for him; but when his last dollar is exhausted, and his capacities very probably prostrated by the intoxicating draughts to which he is driven to escape the horrors of reflection, then he becomes a subject of public charity, and is often maintained in idleness for the rest of his days at a cost of thousands, when a few dollars worth of foresight and timely aid might have preserved him from this fate, and in a position of independent usefulness for his whole after life. But the Right to Labour that is, to constant employment with a just and full recom pense can not be guarantied to all without a radical change in our Social Economy. I, for one, am very willing, nay, most anxious, to do my full share toward securing to every man, woman, and child, full employment and a just recompense for all time to come. I feel sure this can be accomplished. But I can not, as the world goes, give employment at any time to all who ask it of me, nor the hundredth part of them. " Work, work ! give us something to do! anything that will secure us honest bread, 1 is at this moment the prayer of not less than thirty thousand human beings within sound of our city hall bell. They would gladly be producers of wealth, yet remain from week to week mere consum ers of bread which somebody has to earn. Here is an enormous waste and loss. We must devise a remedy. It is the duty, and not less the palpable interest, of the wealthy, the thrifty, the tax-paying, to do so. The ultimate and thorough remedy, I believe, is found in Association. VII. MR. GREELEY S " FOURIERISM." Here follow the concluding portions of Mr. Greeley s lecture on " The Social Architects Fourier." I think, then, we may consider this fact already established, that a more intimate and trustful Social relation is practicable than that which prevails among the mass of man kind that men may labour and possess in common without jealousy, envy, or strife at any rate, without an increase thereby of these cankers of existence. The vulgar cavil that no house is large enough for two families, is as thoroughly refuted by one demon stration as it would be by a million repetitions of it. Association in life and industry is not a chimera it is not a bubble it is not a mere possibility, but palpably and cer tainly practicable. But what then? Are we to abandon our old-fashioned and not altogether comfortless dwellings, our settled ways and maxims, because a different Social economy has been found practicable? Certainly not. There are many thousands of us whose condition could hardly be improved by such a change, and whose sense of security and comfort would surely not be. There is many a humble home of which the happiness of the inmates would not be enhanced by a transfer to the stateliest palace, even though a few crowns and sceptres were to be thrown in to sweeten the bargain. We need not dis parage the old in order to commence the new. There is no probability that the mass of the well-placed and comfort-girded thousands will desert their happy homes to accept any which Association may proffer them, nor that they would be gainers by it if they did. Let all who are satisfied and useful where they are remain so; they are very unlikely to receive benefit or do good by rushing into untried and to them most unnatural relations. Unspeakable is the worth of Habit of the fact that matters have been so ordered, or have so ordered themselves, for a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. Custom not only serves to reconcile us to privations and sufferings, but it has 636 APPENDIX. even impelled mean men to do heroic deeds, hardly conscious that such was their nature. For the great mass of human beings, it is eminently desirable that they should jog on as nearly as possible in the paths worn smooth and plain by their ancestors footsteps, profiting much by the secondary instinct which the usage of successive generations has called into being, until something better shall be plainly demonstrated. Well is it for them and for their race if " the wisdom of our ancestors " be not invoked by this immense class to support and justify their adherence to the folly which has encrusted and obscured that wisdom, so that they may be found admiring less the block of amber than the fly therein imbedded. But on the other hand there is a small number very small, it may be, but I think it increases to whom the old ways, the old purposes of life, have become impossible of pursuit who must breathe more freely or be stifled who cannot live longer to merely personal enda who will readily dig ditches, if that be the most useful employment which solicits them, but who must do even this heroically, not sordidly, or not at all. They are ready to welcome drudgery, privation, obscurity, but not willing that the cover ing and cherishing of their own bodies shall be the purpose of their lifelong struggle. To this small class the idea of a Social Reform commends itself with irresistible force; they can not banish it from their minds, they can not even affect indifference to it. Need I urge that these should be aided from the abundant wealth of the contented class to give their several plans a fair trial? There is no possible shape of evil, no suggestion of depravity, which has not been bodied forth in acts; why should sanguine hopes of uni versal good alone be coldly set aside as fantastic and chimerical? And then, again, that immense multitude whose lives are but a weary round of inces sant and meagerly requited drudgery who herd in hovels, exposed to the visitation of every annoyance and discomfort with whom the contemplation of the miseries incident to their filthy, noisome, unventilated workshops is forbidden by the overmastering hor ror of the apprehended time when even this employment shall vanish, taking their sub sistence along with it shall not the thought of their world- wide sufferings impel us to do something? The universal spectacle of Wealth and Poverty increasing side by side of side-boards of glittering plate accumulating here, while the thin diet there grows more meager and scanty all this is calculated to compel reflection, at least. The labour of this generation produces nearly thrice as much as did a like amount a century ago, yet that immense proportion of the labourers who must subsist on the wages of rude manual toil live no better as a class in the average even worse than of old. In the great City of my residence, a metroplis of wealth, of commerce, civilization, art, and enterprise, not less than forty thousand human beings at this moment vainly seek em ployment have sought it for days and weeks without success, and at length almost without hope. Shall this be accepted as the final, God-ordained condition of Humanity on earth? I can not, will not believe it. No: through effort and vicissitude, through aspiration and stern resolve, through the flashes of electric Genius and the slow ap proaches of prosaic Calculation, if need be, through reproach and obloquy the humane and the Christian must patiently toil on, until at length, with bent frames and beaded brows, they shall have attained the summit of the Mount of Vision, and may thence perceive with exulting gladness the glories of the second Eden. APPENDIX C. MR. GREELEY ON RECONSTRUCTION. SPEECH DELIVERED BY HORACE GREELEY AT THE AFRICAN CHURCH, RICHMOND, VIBGINIA, MAY 15, 1867. FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS. I did not understand that my invitation to speak here to-night, hasty and informal as it was, was the dictate especially of any party or sec tion of this people. I understood that a few citizens of diiferent views perhaps I should rather say, of differing antecedents wished to hear me on the present aspect of our public affairs, and I consented to address them. Hence, I shall not regard myself as speaking here to-night for a party nor to a party. I shall speak as a citizen of New York to citizens of Virginia, on topics which concern our common interest, our common country; and, while I shall epeak with entire frankness, I trust you will realize that I epeak in a spirit of kindness to all, and with reference to the feelings of all. " SHALL TUB SWORD DEVOUR FOREVER? " So asked of old a Hebrew prophet, standing amid the ruins of his desolated country. So I, an American citizen, standing amid some of the ruins of our great civil war, encircled by a hundred thousand graves of men who fell on this side and on that, in obedience to what they thought the dictates of duty and of patriotism, shall speak in the spirit of that prophet, asking you whether the time has not fully come when all the differences, all the heart-burnings, all the feuds and the hatreds which necessarily grew up in the midst of our great struggle, should be aban doned forever? There have been rivers of blood shed; there have been mountains of debt piled up ; and on every side sacrifices, sufferings, and losses attest the earnestness and the sincerity with which our people fought out this great contest to its final con clusion. The wise king said, "There is a time for war and a time for peace." I trust the time for war has wholly passed, that the time for peace has fully come. What obstacles have for the last two years impeded, what obstacles still impede, the full realization of peace to this country? There may be what is called peace, which is only a mockery of peace, when people of different sections and of different parties in a great struggle still look distrustfully, hatefully, as it were, upon each other, and are unwilling to meet and to exchange civilities. There may be an enforced quiet, an avoidance of positive hostilities, and yet no peace, no real peace. What is it, then, that has so long in this country obstructed the advent of a real peace? The war for or against the Union virtually ended with the surrender of General Lee s army more than two years ago. Both parties felt that that surrender was conclusive of the struggle; and, while much had been idly or boastingly said of twenty years of guer illa war, after the armies should be dispersed, yet, when the surrender was communicated to different sections of the South, the people everywhere said, "This is the end of the war; there is no use in struggling any longer." And, according to ordinary calculations, one year from that hour should have seen a perfect restoration of peace. Why have we not yet realized that expectation? In the first place, when the national party, if I may so call it, the party of the Union was in the first flush of a perfect, undivided triumph, an assassin s blow struck down the Chief Magistrate of the nation. I would be the last to argue, or to insinuate, that that was the act of the defeated party in the nation. Still, there were certain facts con nected with it which tended to give an exceedingly malign aspect to that general calamity. The assassin and his fellow-conspirators were violent, vehement partisans of the South (637) 638 APPENDIX. ern cause. I believe one of them had fought for it; while they had all been ardent champions of the principles upon which it was founded, and of the system of human bondage vi ih which it was identified. It was the act of men who were heart and soul with the Co" ederacy, not merely in its efforts, but in its fundamental aspirations. As the news was flashed across the country that its Chief had been stricken down in the hour of general exultation, his first assistant in the government even more foully stabbed and mangled on a bed of sickness and pain, and that co-ordinate efforts had been made to destroy the lives of other heads of the government, a cry of wild and pas sionate grief and wrath arose from the whole people. Those who had been pleading for magnanimity and mercy to the conquered, who had been appealing to not unwilling ears in the few days intervening between the close of the war and the occurrence of that terrible calamity were silenced in a moment by this appalling crime committed upon the person of our great and good President. The nation could not fairly consider, amid its blind rage and grief, that this assassination was the work of a few, unauthorized by and unknown to the great mass of those against whom their fury was directed. It was an unspeakable calamity, a calamity to the Southern quite as much as to the Northern part of the country. The military trials which followed that event which, I might say, completed the tragedy were gratifications of the popular wrath which rather tended to stimulate than to appease it. They were the expressions of what the popular heart felt and desired at the time. For my part, I was opposed to them; and I trust that all Americans have, by this time, learned to regret that the regular and ordinary tribunals of the country had not been allowed to deal with these criminals as they deal with others. Before the popular frenzy had had time to subside, there assembled, under the military order of the President of the United States, conventions or legislatures in the several Southern States, representing only, or mainly, those who had been defeated in our great struggle. I say the Southern conventions or legislatures which then met represented mainly those persons; and the first aspect presented to the people of the North by the action of these legislatures was one of what I may mildly term unfriendliness toward the coloured portion of the people of the South. I am not here to discuss what absolutely was, but what was very apparent at that time. The Southern legislatures met, and began at once either to enact or revive laws discrimi nating harshly and unjustly against the coloured people of the South, as if the object had been to punish them for their sympathy with the Union in the struggle that had just closed. I will here merely glance at the substance of these laws. You are familiar with them; for some of them were passed i?i your own State. There, for instance, are the laws in relation to marriages, to contracts for labour, to arms-bearing, and to giving testimony in courts, which, if they ever had been necessary or wise, had utterly ceased to be applic able after the overthrow of slavery, and the institutions based upon it. I will not detain yon by any comments upon these laws, but will content myself by bringing your atten tion to two of them, which have been revived in most of these States. There are, first, the laws forbidding the black people of the South to bear arms. Now, so long as slavery existed here and in the-^other States of the South, it was perfectly reasonable and proper, so far as anything growing out of slavery was proper, that blacks should be forbidden to have arms in their hands. You may find fault with slavery, but you cannot find fault slavery being admitted as a fact with slaveholding legislatures for forbidding the coloured people to hold and bear arms. It was not deemed compatible with public safety that blacks should be allowed to keep and use arms like white persons. But, the moment slavery had passed away, all possible pretexts for disarming Southern blacks passed away with it. Our Federal Constitution gives the right to the people every where to keep and bear arms; and every law whereby any State legislature undertakes to contravene this, being in conflict with the Constitution of the United States, had no longer any legal force. And, when it was seen that Confederate soldiers in their uniforms of gray went around to black men s houses, and took away arms which they had earned by fighting for the Union, and which had been assigned to them for honourable service, what could this look like but a revival of the Rebellion? Then, as to this matter of testimony: I believe that sound, enlightened jurists, the RICHMOND SPEECH. 639 world over, are agreed that it is the true rule of judicial procedure to admit all testimony, and allow the court and jury to decide as to its value. This is the just rule with regard to atheists, to children of tender years, to persons of evil repute, to persons presumed to be half-witted, etc. Let witnesses of all sorts and characters come forward and testify, and an enlightened judge, an intelligent jury, will have no difficulty in determining the value of the evidence. We in New York have admitted the testimony even of a wife for her husband, without detriment, so far as can be ascertained, to the cause of justice. There should be no exclusion from a privilege so palpably just and fair as this, especially when a discretion always remains with the court and jury before whom the testimony is given to regard it favourably or otherwise. When legislatures came together in this State and others, and proceeded to enact or revive laws to establish that a black person may give testimony in controversies between two blacks, or possibly between a black and white, yet not in a suit between two whites, the common sense of the country was insulted, and its feelings outraged, by this odious and plainly arbitrary restriction. For, when you say a black is fit to give testimony in a case between a black and a white man, you must realize that he is at least as well qualified to give testimony in a controversy between two whites, where it is probable he would have no such bias or partiality as he might have if one of the parties were black. I say, all these laws, invidious, unnecessary, and degrading as they were, looked to the people of the North like a revival of the Rebellion in a more insidious and a good deal less manly aspect than it wore on the heights of Fredericksburgh and in the valley of the Chickamauga. It looked to us at the North, as if men who had been beaten in fair, stand-up fight chose to revive the contest in such a manner that they could annoy and irritate us without exposing themselves to the perils of battle or the penalties of treason. I say that this legislation, which prevailed more or less throughout the States of the South, was one of the chief obstacles, and is one of the still remaining impediments, to an early and genuine reconstruction of the Union. I need not more than allude to the deplorable outrages at Memphis and New Orleans, which seemed to indicate the animus to this course of oppressive class-legislation. You may not probably know to how great an extent the public feeling and the elections of the North in the year 1866 were affected by what we call the New Orleans massacre. I don t care to argue or assume that those who were the victims of those outrages were entirely right, nor that their adversaries or slaughterers were wholly wrong. It was a fact that the coloured people of Louisiana were trying to get the right of suffrage, and by means which their friends thought legitimate. The other party, however, thought otherwise; and instead of referring the matter to the general in command, or to some peaceful tribunal, the reassembling of the old Con stitutional Convention was made the pretext for an attack, which resulted in the slaughter of some scores of American citizens, and in a very stern, sad revulsion of pub lic sentiment to the prejudice of those of you who had been in arms against the Union. These outrages, this unwise and invidious legislation, fixed in the minds, I will not say of a majority of the people of the North, but in the minds of a very large proportion of the wise, intelligent, and conscientious people of the North, a conviction which I think will not easily be shaken, that there can be no real peace in the Union, that there can be no true reconstruction, without the hearty admission on the part of the Southern States, and the securing on the part of the nation, of the right of all men to be governed by equal laws, and to have an equal voice in making and administering those laws. I will not say that we who so hold constitute a great majority of the Northern people; but I will say that we are very many more than we were prior to the anti-negro enactments of Mr. Johnson s legislatures in the Southern States, and before the outrages of 1866 at Memphis and at New Orleans. I think that, before these collisions were reported to the North, the conviction was fixed in a great many minds, as it now is in a great many more, that no reconstruction would be real and enduring which did not include guaran ties for the rights of the coloured people of the South; and when I say rights, I mean their equal rights with any and all other persons. It is a very common remark, and a very true one, that the North is in honour bound to guarantee the liberties of the black people of this country, because of their conduct during our great war. I have no doubt that this is true; yet I deem it but half the truth. I hold the South equally bound to 64:0 APPENDIX. secure the same result, because of the conduct of the blacks toward the whites of the South in that same civil war. I fully admit the obligations of the North (or the nation) to the blacks. Some may exaggerate their services, others unduly depreciate them; but there was the general fact, that, whereas, in the beginning of the war, when nothing was said about emancipation, the blacks of the South shouted with their masters without knowing much about the cause of the war, yet, as the struggle proceeded and became more deadly, and the North found itself obliged to proclaim emancipation as a means of putting down the resistance at the South, the sympathies of the coloured people of the South, however silently expressed, became from that hour more and more decided and unanimous on the side of the Union. They did not at first comprehend the contest; and yet thousands, from mere instinct, from what they heard at Southern barbecues and in their master s houses, learned that the war on the part of the South was a war for slavery; and they naturally argued that the war on the part of the North either was or must become a war for free dom. Now, then, I say that, while the North is under obligations to those people for thousands of acts of kindness toward our soldiers, who were sometimes scattered as fugutives in a hostile territory, and for acts of positive aid on the battle-field and in the camp, the South also owes a debt of gratitude to these people for their general fidelity and good-will, as well as good sense, displayed in resisting every temptation to take advantage of their masters 1 extremity to achieve at any cost their own liberties. I believe Southern men will do the blacks of the South the justice to say, that very often whole neigh bourhoods were almost stripped of white men of any considerable force, and lay wholly at the mercy of those white men s slaves. These knew what the contest meant; they knew that they might, if they chose to do so, commit massacre, and, having desolated their masters households, they might fly to the Yankees, by whom they reasonably hoped to be protected. But I do not know, out of the ten thousand instances where these temptations were presented, that there were even five cases in all where they were not resisted. You heard it said that Mr. Lincoln s proclamation was intended to put the knife to the throats of all the Southern whites, that it was a general proclamation of liberty to kill and burn and ravage throughout the South. In that light, it was held up to general reprobation. I ask you all to bear witness, that this prediction was nowhere justified by the event. The coloured people of the South who were still held as slaves uniformly felt that their affection fr>r their masters and their families was such, that they would be felons and outlaws, murderers and criminals of the deepest dye, if they should take advantage of their masters absence in the war, to abuse their families. The South ern whites ought to feel, and I trust that many of them do feel, gratitude toward the coloured people for their general deportment throughout the war. The blacks often ran away to the Union armies and enlisted there ; but they took no undue advantage of the opportunities offered by their masters distress or their masters absence. Fellow-citizens, there have been many instances wherein men held in slavery have been instantly or gradually, by one means or another, emancipated, but I don t remem ber any instance where a fettered race was liberated from slavery, and yet kept for generations in a servile, abject, degraded condition. There is the great slaveholding Empire of Brazil, always slaveholding since it had any consequence at all, wherein men who are slaves to-day may be free to-morrow, and thenceforth eligible to any trust, any office, being voters and citizens, precisely as though born free and white. Such was the course pursued by Great Britain in respect to the slaves emancipated in her colonies. Slavery is one thing, freedom another. But there is an intermediate condition, which is neither slavery nor liberty, that incites all the energy and aspiration of freemen, and yet involves more than half the disabilities of the slave. Such a condition as that, I believe, was never long maintained or endured in any civilized country. And yet that seems to be the condition which the dominant race in the South destined the blacks to occupy by the legislation of 1865-66, a condition which is neither slavery nor freedom, and one which men partly educated, and who felt themselves to a certain extent emancipated, would find utterly unbearable. Let me here meet an objection which is sometimes offered. Some men say, "The black people of the South are, to a great extent, ignorant and degraded; how then can you insist that they are qualified to enjoy all the privileges of citizens?" I say if you BICHMOND SPEECH. 641 make ignorance a uniform ground of exclusion from political power, I can comprehend the justice of your rule, your objection. But so long as ignorance or degradation is no bar to citizenship as to white men, I protest against making it a bar to suffrage on the part of black men, who have excuses for ignorance which white men have not. But then, there are peculiar reasons why this race among us should have its liberties secured by the most stringent, firmest guaranties. They are, and must remain, to some extent, a separate and peculiar people in the land. They will be exposed at every step to perils and antipathies which other inen are not, not only because of their colour, but because of their weakness as well. For they are not only a minority of our people, but their numerical importance is steadily declining. When our first Federal census was taken, in 1790, they were nearly a fifth of our entire population; when our last census was taken, in 1860, they were but an eighth; and the child is now born who will see them no more than a twentieth. I do not believe that they will prove unable to hold their ground among us as freemen, nor that they will prove less prolific in freedom than in bondage. But there is no African immigration to this country, and never has been any voluntary immigration of negroes to any region outside of the tropics. They may be dragged into the temperate zone in fetters, as they have been; but in freedom, their ten dency is wholly the other way. And, on the other hand, the waves of a great and steadily swelling European immigration are constantly breaking on our shores, depositing here Borne 250,000 persons per annum, mainly in the prime of youthful vigour. By this gigan tic iullux the character of our population is being constantly modified, so that the blacks, now a majority in two or three States, will soon be a minority in each, and an inconsid erable, powerless fraction of our whole people. The present, therefore, is the accepted time to secure their rights, when there is a public interest felt in them, and when there are obligations of honour incumbent upon the whole country which it cannot well disre gard. Their equal rights as citizens are to be secured nosv or not at all. I insist, then, in the name of justice and humanity, in the name of our country, and of even righteous interest and section of that country, that the rights of all the American people native or naturalized, born such or made such shall be guaranteed in the State constitutions first, and in the Federal Constitution so soon as possible, that we make it a funda mental condition of American law and policy, that every citizen shall have, in the eye of the law, every right of every other citizen. I would make the equal rights of the col oured people of the country, under the laws and the constitutions thereof, the corner stone of a true, beneficent reconstruction. I wish to be done with the topic at once and forever. I wish to have it disposed of and out of the way, so that we can go on to other topics and other interests that demand our attention. I long to say that we have settled forever the question of black men s rights by imbedding them in the constitutions of the States and the nation, so that they cannot be disturbed evermore. If this had been promptly and heartily done two years ago, when the Johnson legislatures of the South first assembled, every State of the South would have been in the Union ere this, And very apprehension of penalties to be inflicted on the people of the South would have been banished forever. But it is said that there are Republican States, or States under Republican rulers, which have not granted to the blacks their full rights. That is disgracefully true. The great mass of the Republicans have always insisted that black enfranchisement was a necessity, and have uniformly insisted that it should be effected. We have been resisted, and to some extent overborne, by a mere shred of our party combining with the Demo crats to defeat us. Still, public sentiment has steadily improved, until nearly every Republican in the North, with many who have acted with the Democrats, now heartily favour a national guaranty of all rights to all. If there be any who think the Republican party ought to be dissolved, if there be one present who desires that it should get out of the way to give room for new combina tions, I say to him, help us to finish this controversy by imbedding in every constitution (State or national) a provision that every citizen shall have all the legal rights of every other citizen, and no more. Let us be done with this matter, and then we can move on to what may be the next question in order. I come now to proscription as another obstacle, impediment, or whatever you may choose to call it, to the reconciliation of the Southern people to the Union. It is asked, 41 642 .APPENDIX. and very cogently, " How can you expect us to be reconciled to a government which denies us the right to vote or to hold office under it?" A very fair question. In my judgment, there is no reason why any man who, to-day, is a thoroughly loyal and faithful citizen of the United States, should be restrained from voting. This, however, is a mat ter which rests entirely with Congress ; and what I offer are my own private views. It ia just and wise to disfranchise men who are still disloyal, and who desire that disloyal men should obtain the mastery of this country. I deny that those who are implacably hostile to the national authority, who are wandering off to Brazil, to Mexico, etc., have any natural right to a voice in the government of the country. And that there is a class in the South who merely submit or acquiesce, who are reconciled only so far that they don t choose to put themselves in the way of punishment, there can be very little doubt. I hope the number of this class is comparatively small now, and that it is daily diminishing. May I not hope that the doings in this city this week have contributed somewhat to diminish its numbers? The government should see that these dissatisfied men have no control in the country. The people should deny to any man who would divide the country, or refuse to be reconciled to it, a share in its government. I accept the proscription embodied in the military reconstruction act of Congress, only as a pre caution against present disloyalty; and I believe the nation will insist on such proscrip tion being removed, so soon as reasonable and proper assurances are given that disloyalty has ceased to be powerful and dangerous in the Southern States. Then as to the question of confiscation, what is to be said? What is the truth about confiscation? I have been told, since I came here, that the coloured people of this city and the State were refusing to buy lor themselves homes, because they were imbued with the belief that Congress would very soon confiscate and distribute the lands of the Rebels of this State, and give each of them a share. If this be so, I beg you to believe that you are more likely to earn a home than get one by any form of confiscation. I have no right to speak for Congress, and cannot say what it will do ; but I have a right to say what Congress has done. Now we have had, since the war closed, two years of violent polit ical contest. Acts have been done and feelings evinced in the South within those years which were strongly calculated to irritate the overwhelming majority in Congress. Then there has been at the head perhaps I should say the head and foot of the movement for confiscation the very ablest as well as the oldest member of Congress, Thaddeus Stev ens of Pennsylvania, one of the strongest men who has been seen in Congress at any time, and who has achieved great influence at the North by forty years of uncompromis ing warfare against every species of human bondage. He has been the recognized leader of the House for the last six or eight years. Mr. Stevens has made speeches for confis cation, first, to his constituents; next, in Congress; and he has lately written a letter condemning those men who are "peddling out amnesty," and insisting upon confiscation. But if any other member of Congress has gravely proposed any measure of confiscation at all, I don t remember the fact; and if any committee of either house has reported any scheme of confiscation since the close of the war, I am not aware of it. I say no bill has been even reported which proposed to take away the property of persons merely because they have been Rebels, and give it to others because they were loyal. These are the facts in the past. You can judge of the future as well as I can. I don t mean to say that Congress could not be provoked to decree confiscation by menaces of violence and acts of outrage at the South. I don t pretend to know what Congress may do under some conceivable circumstances; I state what it has done and has intimated its purpose to do, so far as I can speak from knowledge and recollection. Let me speak for myself only as to the general policy of confiscation. If half the vacant, waste lands of the South could be instantly distributed among the landless, I have no doubt that the effect would be beneficent. I think that such an allotment of a small farm to every poor man would do good to the many and no real harm to the few. But, when you come to the practical work of confiscation, it will be found a very tedious pro cess that years would be required to consummate. And, meantime, what is to become of those who must live by their daily labour? Who is to fence and cultivate the land? What is to become of the great mass of the poor who must live by cultivating the earth? When we reflect upon the general devastation of the South, by reason of the turmoil and ravage of war, and consider how all industry would be paralyzed by the prospect and the EICHMOND SPEECH. 643 process of confiscation, we shall realize that inevitable evils of confiscation are too great to justify an experiment of this character. In my judgment, any general confiscation will produce general bankruptcy and desolating famine. I judge that the evils of such confiscation exceed all that have been experienced by the country in all its past con vulsions. Again: Mr. Stevens proposes to pay five hundred million dollars into the treasury by a "mild process of confiscation." I do not know what could be done in this way; but I ain very confident that all the confiscations that have ever taken place since men first went to war have not altogether resulted in putting five hundred million dollars into the public treasuries of nations. I do not speak of those confiscations whereby gome great conquerors seized and appropriated the treasures and jewels of an Oriental king; I epeak of the confiscation of individual property in the shape of lands and houses. Indi viduals have grown enormously rich by confiscation, have secured to themselves duke doms and principalities ; but they were the men who worked the machinery; the great mass derived no benefit, or very little, from their plunder. How much better are our iunctionaries to-day? Now, as to providing poor men with lands by any such process as this. I admit the premise that the poor should have lands. I have for many years advocated the policy of allowing every poor man to help himself to a portion of the public lands upon the easiest terms. There are hundreds of millions of acres still belonging to the Republic in the South as well as in the North and West, in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkan sas, as well as in States farther north. These lands are public property, and one hundred and sixty acres of them are offered to actual settlers on the payment of ten dollars, which is charged to cover the expenses of surveys, deeds, etc. I have always been in favour of encouraging settlement upon the public lands, and I am of the opinion now that it will be easier and much wiser for the coloured man to acquire a home in this form than be vainly awaiting the possible chance of acquiring one by confiscation. I may speak confidently of what has occurred in other lands; and I say confidently that confiscation has rarely or never aided the poor to secure homes any more than it has filled treasuries. It has bred deadly feuds and perpetuated class hatreds. Many of the lands confiscated in Ireland two centuries ago by Cromwell are yet the occasion of strife and bitterness; the heirs of the original owners believing themselves to-day justly entitled to those lands, and that any means of recovering them, rebellion inclusive, would be justifiable. I believe no man who is the true friend of our coloured people-would advise them to help themselves to the land which had been wrested from their white neighbours by con fiscation. I will not further insist upon the fact that confiscation shrivels and paralyzes the industry of the whole community subjected to its influence; but, in my judgment, if all the property of the Southern States were taken by confiscation to-morrow, and put up at auction, you could not get five hundred millions of dollars out of it and into the treasury. How fraud and perjury would flourish, what mountains of falsehood would be conjured up by the presence of general confiscation, I need not say. Instantly, every one who apprehended danger to his property would make a sham sale or transfer of it to some loyal cousin or nephew whom he thinks he can trust, to be kept until the proper time for its safe restoration; when he might find that his trusted relative had concluded to keep it. So it has been, so it would be. All manner of deceit, fraud, corruption, and miscellaneous iniquity flourishes in the presence of any attempt at general confiscation. I do not approve of appeals to any particular class, and I make no claim to be a special friend of the coloured people; but this I say, friends and countrymen, since I have been here I have been more than ever before impressed with the exceeding cheapness of Vir ginia lands. I believe there are lands selling to-day near the city at ten dollars per acre, which will be worth in a few years ten times that price; and I say to all, if you can buy lands in Virginia and pay for them, buy them; for they are certain to be dearer in the early future. I am confident buying lands is the cheapest way of getting them. I am confident that buying these lands is the cheapest possible mode of securing a homestead. Carlyle says that the great mistake of Rob Roy was his failure to realize that he could obtain his beef cheaper in the grass market of Glasgow than by harrying the lowlands; 644 APPENDIX. and he will repeat that mistake who fails to secure a farm by purchase to-day In Virginia, because he hopes to obtain one under some future act of confiscation. I urge you, poor men of Virginia, whether white or black, to secure yourselves homes of your own forthwith. If you can buy them here, do so, before the coming influx of immigration shall have rendered lands too dear. If not, strike off to the public lands. South, North, and West, and hew out for yourselves homes as my ancestors did in New Hampshire, and as millions have done throughout the country. Become land-owners, all of you, so soon as you may. Own something which you can call a home. It will give you a deeper feeling of independence and of self-respect, and do not wait to obtain a home by confiscation. " Well," says a Conservative, " what you mean by all your talk is, that we may get back to self-government and representation in Congress, if we all become Republicans and vote the Radical ticket." No, sir, I do not mean that. I heartily wish you were all Re publicans; for I believe the Republican party, while it has made some mistakes, and includes perhaps its fair share of the fools and rascals, does yet embody the nobler instincts and more generous aspirations of the American people. But many of you are not Republicans ; and I do not seek the votes of these for my ticket, except in so far as they shall be heartily converted to my faith, I expect the rest to vote what they call the Conservative ticket ; and I ask of them only: 1. That they interpose no obstacle to any man s voting the Republican ticket who wants to ; and, 2. That they select from their own ranks men who can take the oath prescribed by Congress, so that their choice shall nowise ernbarass nor impede an early and complete reconstruction. Your way to restor ation lies through the gate of obedience, and I entreat you to take it promptly and heartily. Men of Virginia! I entreat you to forget the years of (slavery, and secession, and civil war, now happily past, in the hopeful contemplation of the better days of freedom and nnion and peace, now opening before you. Forget that some of you have been masters, others slaves, some for disunion, others against it, and remember only that you are Virginians, and all now and henceforth freemen. Bear in mind that your State is the heart of a great Republic, not the frontier of a weaker Confederacy, and that your une qualled combination of soil, timber, minerals, and water-power fairly entitle you to a population of five millions before the close of this century. Consider that the natural highway of empire the shortest and easiest route from the Atlantic to the heart of the great valley lies up the James River and down the Eanawha, and that this city, with its mill-power superior to any other in our country but that of St. Anthony s Falls on the Mississippi, ought to insure you a speedy development of manufactures surpassing any Lowell or Lawrence, with a population of at least half a million, before the close of this century. I exhort you, then, Republicans and Conservatives, whites and blacks, to bury the dead past in mutual and hearty good-will, and in a general, united effort to promote the prosperity and exalt the glory of our long-distracted and .bleeding, but henceforth reunited, magnificent country 1 APPENDIX D. MR. GREELEY S PRESIDENTIAL CANVASS. I. THE TOUR IN NEW ENGLAND. On the 3d of August, Mr. Greeley, accompanied by his wife, and daughter Ida, left New- York on a visit to New Hampshire. The journey became quite an ovation, and Mr. Greeley was frequently called out to address the people. The reports of several of these brief addresses and speeches, which were for the most part altogether impromptu, are appended : Remarks at Manchester, New Hampshire, August 7. FELLOW CITIZENS OP MY NATIVE STATE You are aware that I am among you on a visit to my relatives and the playmates of my chilhood as I have often been among them during the half century since I left this neighbourhood in quest of a living else where. I first saw Manchester fifty-seven years ago, when a flood and running ice in the Merrimack rendered it impassible at Reed s or Thornton s Ferry, and compelled my father, returning with me from my grandfather s in Londonderry to our home in Am- herst, to take a circuitous route in order to cross at this point by an old and rickety struc ture known as McGregor s Bridge. There were then three or four fishermen s huts on the site of this thrifty, productive city of thirty to forty thousand inhabitants. Lowell and Nashua were unknown, even as names, and no cotton mill (certainly no print works) existed in this State. The intervening years have witnessed immense steps in the growth of our country s industry and peaceful progress, and I trust that all sections have been benefitted thereby that the cotton grower and the cotton spinner may well rejoice in each other s thrift and prosperity. Good men sincerely apprehended that if slavery were abolished, cotton would no longer be produced in adequate quantities; but many of them have lived to realize and rejoice that the labour of a free man is worth more than that of a slave. I trust that other misapprehensions and sectional hatreds are yielding to the lessons of experience; that a long and bright era of peace and fraternity has dawned upon our once distracted country, and in that faith I bid you a kindly good night. Speech at Concord, August 8. MY FRIEND TAPPAK, AND MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE More than half a century has passed since I left this my native State in quest of fortune and larger opportunities elsewhere. Those years, as you know, have been full of inci dent. Time rushes, events hurry each other, in our day, and one who lives half a cen tury in this age lives longer than the whole of the life of Methuselah. Well, fellow-citi zens, the half century which is passed since I ceased to be a resident of New Hampshire has seen the origin and growth of railroads, telegraphs, and the cables across the ocean. It has seen the rise and fall of empires and dynasties, and it has seen, best of all to me, the overthrow and the destruction of American slavery. A great thinker has said that to-day is a great thing in disguise; that a day looks common and trival to the thought less, but all great and noble successes are made up of to-days. I do not know how well (645) 646 APPENDIX. I may have done, nor how many have done better, in this age; bnt would that I might feel that I have added to the history of the last half century of my country ! I believe that our country is better worth living in to-day, with better opportunities for its humblest citi zen because of the events of the last half century. In these events I have borne a hum ble part; often mistaken, often shortsighted, doing the thing which seemed right, not always which was in the wisest and largest view right, but still I think my life has led me to exercise a larger charity towards the great mass of the human race. I believe that the great majority of the human family are constantly aiming to do right. I have always wished in my busy life to come back to the State of my birth; always hoped to have some opportunity to return; not expecting ever again to dwell with its people, but to commune with them, and I trust that the few days which are to be spent among you and with my friend will be numbered among the richest and happiest days of my life. I hope that hereafter as well as now that in a life which draws towards its close, and which ought to be devoted to rest, I shall have frequent opportunities, not many years hence, to come to New Hampshire, to mingle with its people and rejoice with them that the old State bears so proud a position among her sister States; that her half million of sons and daughters, now residents of other States, always look back with proud affection to the State and say, although her granite rocks are hard and her soil niggardly, reluctant to give forth fruits, still, for all that, she is among the dearest of all States to us, and her people are among the happiest and most intelligent of any we have seen. So then, friends, in the trust that I shall have opportunities hereafter to mingle more familiarly with you, and that those differences which have separated us in the past will gradually fade away in the light of new events and new circumstances, and that we shall come to know each other better and appreciate each other more thoroughly in that faith and hope I now take my leave of you. Speech at Bradford, August 8. MB. TAPPAN, FELLOW-CITIZENS OF MY NATIVE STATE. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN There are two New Hampshires one consisting of her hills and rocks and woods, bright green meadows and sparkling streams; and the other, by far the more important and. unique New Hamshire of the two, the men and women Who claim her soil as their birth place. More, New Hampshire people are again divided into those who live on the soil and those who have congregated, who have sought opportunities, scope, and success in other States and in other places than their native land. I belong to the New Hampshire that traverses many lands and distant spots; but when the Fourth of July or Thanks giving or Christmas Day comes, or any recurring anniversary that brings to mind recol lections of old familiar hearths, I then recur with all the rest of that outer New Hamp shire to the land of my ancestry, and lask " How are the old folks at home f " From distant lands everywhere, from California, Texas, Iowa; from the equator and from the other sides of the globe, the other New Hampshire looks back in mind to the rugged hills of our native State, smoother now than when we wrestled with their rocks, and tried to wrest an existence from the granite beds. It has been said of me that I advise all young people to go West. True, to some extent, I have, and do advise those who find existence so hard in the Eastern States to turn to that setting sun where they find so much unoccupied and fertile land, which, tickled with a plough, laughs such bounteous harvests; bnt as to the people that now compose New Hampshire there are none better fed, better clothed, or better taught, and on behalf of that outer expansive, New Hampshire, whose limits extend from the equator to the pole, I claim adoption into the family of our common ancestors. We do you no discredit, I hope no discredit to the schools and churches and the intelligence and morality and the religion of the inner New Hampshire. In whatever sphere we may be called to serve our country I hope and trust you will not have cause to be ashamed of us, and that we will do no discredit to the beautiful land that gave us birth. Remarks at Tilton, August 12. FELLOW-CITIZENS or MY NATIVE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE A few words, which mast necessarily be hasty, may be acceptable to some of you. It has been said that our TOUK IN NEW ENGLAND. 64:7 Americans are a little too fond of going abroad to Europe ; but I am sure that he is a poor American who does not come back a better American than when he went who does not appreciate America when he returns. Europe may be in many respects better than America: her population is more thickly settled, her arts and sciences more thoroughly developed, and her apple trees, 1 have noticed, have less dead limbs on them than they have in New Hampshire. But the American who travels through Europe finds reason to appreciate the freedom, the opportunity, the hope of American youth. I hope that the more people that go abroad the more will come back to appreciate the lakes, the skies, the air, the fruitful soil, the gorgeous scenery, and glory of our own country. I do assure yon, as one who has travelled in Europe, that I could see there no such thing as a people gathering to consider any question of public importance, except of a relig ious character: and I rejoice that I was born and have been permitted to live here, where the people have everything to say in the management of our institutions. In the hope and belief that our country, free from some entanglements and some embarrassments, is destined to become dearer to all of us, I take my leave. At Laconia, an immense crowd was gathered, when the train arrived, to see and hear Mr. Greeley. He spoke as follows : FELLOW-CITIZENS During the half century that I have been absent not a resident of the State of New Hampshire I have frequented almost every part of the State, the Bouth and the west, where I have relatives, and the north, attracted by the beauty and fame of its scenery. I have often wished and rejoice now to find myself in this the great central part of the State, which I have long desired to visit. The other day I climbed to the summit of Kearsarge Mountain, somewhat of an effort for one of my weight and years, and from it I saw a grand and bold country, full of smiling fields, fruitful orchards and houses such as labourers in no other country live in, because they cannot afford it. These evidences of general thrift grow from steady industry, because what must be won must be worked for; and that in a fact not to be deplored. I never saw children who were better taught and people who lived better then those of New Hampshire. Attracted, as some of you may be, to the more yielding soil of the West, to Oregon, California, "and Texas, in time to come, you will all agree with me that there is no better place in which to live and die than the grand old State of New Hampshire. So, friends, I bid yon farewell. Speech at Lancaster, August 12. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS It has never before been my happiness to visit this beautiful village, and yet a native of this State. I have often remembered the day when more than half a century ago, I left it in pursuit of opportunity and possibly fortune elsewhere. The years that I have passed away from it have been full of important and remarkable events, and with some of them my name has been some what connected, as possibly it may be in the future with other events. I can only say that from the beginning to the end I have tried to pursue that course which seemed to me consistent with eternal justice, and therefore calculated to advance the prosperity of my country and its people. Erring often, doubtless for human wisdom is at best short sighted, sometimes harsh when it would have been wiser and juster to have been tem perate and kind I can only say that from the time when I first entered upon the discussion of public affairs to this hour I have not much regarded party, considering party always simply a means to an end ten times more important to the well-being and the upright conduct of our government, of our people. Always acting upon that convic tion, I have sometimes alienated friends on this side and friends on that side, now here and now there; but this was indispensable to an independent and honest political con viction. No man has ever yet pursued a thoughtful, observant, manly and independent course without sometimes offending and alienating friends here and there. He must do eo if he is to be entirely and rightly faithful to his highest convictions. Well, friends, there is much said about aspiration and ambition in this country of ours, and it is well that they should be aspiring and it is not ill that our countrymen should be 648 APPENDIX. ambitious. The grand result, the forwardment of mankind, is created "by the agitators, by the men who stand out; by the men who dare to be wiser to-day than their fathers were day before yesterday. I can only say for that class, the class of whom I am a repre sentative, the class who are said to be agitators, this: That many times when a man is accused of absorbing ambition he has been thinking not of the plaudits of the multitude, not of the chances or the prospects of personal elevation. Very often his mental eye has been fixed on some cottage in the land of his boyhood, where sits an aged mother, widowed perhaps, gray, wrinkled and tottering, dividing her attention between that Book wherein are gathered up all her hopes of blissful immortality and those journals or records wherein she reads the story of her son s efforts, possibly achievements, and hopes for the day when he may return and find her still living to greet and honour him as no shouts of an applauding multitude ever can do. So I say that tens of thousands, who are misjudged as looking for grand opportunities for themselves or advancement for them selves, are thinking only of some spot where fond affection keeps watch over its loved ones career, and hopes that it may be, if not distinguished, at least useful to the country. Friends and neighbours, I am in the decline of life. I have passed my sixtieth year. Many of the preceeding years have been years of agitations and trouble and despondency sometimes, or, rather, of the failure of the sunlight of hope. These years have made their impress upon me. I am older than I was when our late terrible trial began, much older in feeling and in years; but, old as I am, I have an ear still, I think, not deaf to the call of duty; I have a heart which I trust does not fail to beat responsive to the impulses of patriotism; therefore I am glad to see this company of people hereto-night. Many of them doubtless disagree with me in the present or have disagreed with me in the past, or may disagree with me in the future, for we cannot read the future, but I trust the most of them believe that whatever I have done, unwisely it may be, harshly it may be, I have done in faith and love for the best good of my country and her people. In that trust, Friends of my native State I greet you. I hope you will follow me in the future as you have followed me in the past. Judge me kindly if you may. If sometimes you are obliged to condemn me, judge me kindly and believe that whatever of human error or imperfection I may have exhibited in the past and may exhibit in the present, I still rejoice that here, in my native State, I am appreciated that if my lot should bear me back to this, my native State, to spend here my latest years if such future should befall me I shall spend them among those who have looked upon me, many of them kindly, from boyhood, and who will be glad at least to welcome me among them when ever I have a little time to spend here, and rejoice with me that through my efforts and their efforts or in spite of my efforts or their efforts our country is great, prosperous, and free, and our people, I may say, are destined in the future to mark out a magnifi cent destiny, which shall be a guiding light for the nations of men through all coming time. On the same day Mr. Greeley also made brief but happily conceived remarks at Plymouth, Lisbon, Whitefield, Littleton, and Gorham, at each of which places he was greeted by a large concourse of people. Speech at Portland, Maine, August 14. LADIES AKD GENTLEMEN It is certain that throughout the course of my life, as far as- I have been connected with public affairs, 1 have struggled with such capacity as God has given me, for, first, impartial and universal liberty; second, for the unity and great ness of our common country; third, and by no means least, when the former end was- attained, for early and hearty reconciliation and peace among our countrymen. For these great ends I have struggled and I hope the issue is not doubtful. I thoroughly compre hend that no personal consideration has drawn this vast assembly; other higher and grander considerations have collected you around me to-day together. It is a part of the unwritten law of our country that a candidate for President may not make speeches ii vindication and commendation of the principles whereupon he is supported, or of th TOUB IN NEW ENGLAND. 649 measures which his election is intended to promote, though a candidate for Vice-Presi dent is under no such inhibition. I acquiesce in this restriction; I recognize and affirm its propriety. The temptation to misreport and misrepresent a candidate for the higher post is so great, the means of cir culating such perversions among people who will never see a word of their refutation are so vast, that a candidate has no moral right to subject his friends to the perils he must brave, if not invite, by taking a part in the canvass; yet there is a truth to be uttered in behalf of those who have placed me before the American people in my present attitude, which does them such honour that I claim the privilege of stating it here; and now this is that truth: No person has ever yet made the face Known that he purposed to support or actually did support my nomination, whether at Cincinnati, at Baltimore, or in the action which resulted in sending delegates to either Convention, the basis of a claim to office at my hands : no one who favoured my nomination before either convention or at either convention has sought office at my hands, either for himself or any one else, nor has any one suggested to me that I might strengthen myself as a candidate by promis ing to appoint any one to any important office whatever. In a very few instances, less than a dozen I am sure, certain of the smaller fry of politicians have since my double nomination hinted to me by letter that I might increase my chance of election, by prom ising a post-office or some such place to my volunteer correspondents respectively. I have not usually responded to those overtures, but I now give a general notice that should I be elected I will consider the claims of those untimely aspirants after those of the more modest and reticent. In two or three instances I have been asked to say whether I would or would not, if elected, confine my appointments to republicans. I answer those by pointing to that plank of the Cincinnati platform wherein all who concur in the principles therein set forth are cordially invited to participate in their establishment and vindication. I never yet heard of a man who invited his neighbours to raise a house and proceeded to kick them out of it so soon as the roof was fairly over his head. For my own part I recognize every honest man who approves and adheres to the Cincinnati platform as my political brother, and as such fully entitled to my confidence and friendly regard. One other point demands a word. Those adverse to me ask what pledges I have given to those lately hostile to the Union to secure their favour and support. I answer, no man or woman in all the South ever asked of me either directly or through another, any other pledge than is given through all my acts and words. From the hour of Lee s surrender down to this moment no Southern man ever hinted to me an expectation, hope, or wish that the rebel debt, whether Confederate or State, should be assumed or paid by the Union, and no Southern man who could be elected to a Legislature or made colonel of a militia regiment ever suggested the pensioning of rebel soldiers, or any of them, even as a remote possibility. All who nominated me were perfectly aware that I had upheld and justified federal legislation to repress Ku-Klux conspiracy and outrage, though I had long ago insisted as strenuously as I now do that complete amnesty and a genuine obliv ion of the bloody, hateful past would do more for the suppression and utter extinction of such outrages than all the force bills and suspension of habeas corpus ever devised by men. Wrong and crime must be suspressed and punished, but far wiser and nobler is the legislation, the policy by which they are prevented. From those who support me in the South I have heard but one demand justice; but one desire reconciliation. They wish to be heartily reunited and at peace with the North on any terms which do not involve the surrender of their manhood. They ask that they should be regarded and treated by the federal authority as citizens, not cul prits, so long as they obey and uphold every law consistent with equality and right. They desire a rule which, alike for white and black, shall encourage industry and thrift, and discourage rapacity and villainy. They cherish a joyful hope, in which I fully con cur, that between the 5th of November and the 4th of March next, quite a number of the Governors and other dignitaries, who, in the absurd name of republicanism and loyalty, have for years been piling debts and taxes upon their war-wasted States, will follow the wholesome example of Bullock, of Georgia, and seek the shades of private life. The darker and darker those shades the better for themselves and for mankind, and the hope that my election may hasten the much desired hegira of thieving carpet-baggers has 650 APPENDIX. reconciled to the necessity of supporting me many who would otherwise have hesitated and probahly refused. Fellow-citizens, the deposed and partially exiled Tammany Ring has stolen ahout $30,000,000 from the city of New- York; that was a most gigantic robbery and hurled its contrivers and abettors from power and splendour to impotency and infamy, but the thieving carpet-baggers have stolen at least three times that amount stolen it from the already impoverished and needy and they still flaunt their prosperous villany in the highest places of the land, and are addressed as "honourable "and "excellency.? I think I hear a voice from the honest people of all the States declaring their iniquity shall be gainful and insolent no longer at farthest, than till the 4th of March next. By that time those criminals will have heard a national verdict pronounced that will cause them to "fold their teuts like the Arabs, and as silently steal away," and that I trust will be the end of their stealing at the cost of the good name of our country and the well-being of her people. Mr. Greeley also spoke at Augusta, Maine, Portsmouth, and Rye Beach, New Hampshire, but in neither place making notable allusion to current politics. On his journey to Boston and thence to New- York he was fre quently called to the platform of the car by crowds who had come to see him, and in many instances responded to hearty greetings with kindly and appropriate remarks. . II. THE TOOK IN THE WEST. Mr. Greeley left New- York early on September 18, on his Western tour. At Newark, Elizabeth, Trenton, and other places in New Jersey, his arrival was greeted by multitudes of men and women. At Trenton, and at Bristol, Pennsylvania, he responded so the welcome with a few pleas ant words, as he did also at several places in Pennsylvania. But the first place where he made any extended remarks was at the city of Lancaster. Speech at Harrisburgh, September 18. FELLOW-CITIZENS OP HAKBISBUBGH Scarcely had the last gun of our great civil war ceased to reverberate over the hills of Virginia when my voice was raised in favour of for bearance and mercy, amnesty and reconciliation. I felt that there had been bloodshed enough and that what was now needed was the manifestation of a spirit of Herculean charity. Remember that dying injunction of the great King David, that vengeance should be brought on his chief officer, Joab, because he had shed the blood of war in peace. I would have no drop of blood shed more than absolute necessity should dictate. So, then, at that early day, when the country was infuriated by the assassination of its President. I dared to speak, when there werewery few to hear, on the side of forgiveness. Time passed on, and at different periods I was required, it seemed, to give the same tes timony to unwilling ears. I happen now to be a candidate, very unexpectedly to myself, I believe mainly because of those utterances. I think they, more than anything else, created the state of things which made me a claimant for your suffrages. I speak these words now, because, fellow-citizens, at some time you may be required to speak unpop ular truths, and I wish you to feel that the truth which to-day rejects to-morrow or next day will welcome. Now I stand above all things the candidate of universal amnesty. I have i^aght the oattle for impartial suffrage until victory is won. I now demand the completion of the national triumph in the relief of every man now disfranchised because of his part in the late rebellion his relief by a perfect amnesty. We had a glorious promise of that amnesty in the platform of the Republican party of 1868. That promise has not been performed. I stand here to demand that it shall be. It seems to me, fellow-citizens, that I need not plead for these doctrines in the State founded by William Penn. The world TOUR IN THE WEST. 651 knows what was his spirit, and they know how thoroughly that spirit pleads to-day for the doctrines in behalf of which I stand before you. If I could insure the success of that amnesty better by ceasing to be a candidate I would gladly do so. I desire only that our disfranchised and proscribed fellow-citizens may be welcomed back under the folds of the national flag, which, in an unwise hour, they deserted; and shall be welcomed back not as penitents, but as fellow-citizens who, having seen the error of their ways, and having again renewed their old fidelity to their country shall be like yon and me, like every man, white or black, in this country citizens simple; and only on that platform, for that purpose, I stand before you. And, fellow-citizens, be cheered by the truth that that future belongs to us. Passions, hatred, and thought of rebellion, all these things, must necessarily die away. Time will make their echoes feebler and feebler, and the day cannot be far distant when we shall rejoice in a restored nationality, so perfect that there shall be no citizen, American born or naturalized, who is not comprehended within its beneficent folds. In these views and spirit I bid you, fellow-citizens, a kind and affec tionate farewell. Address at the Industrial Exposition, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 20. A solitary soldier equipped and plumed for war is not an imposing spectacle. Sur rounded by the agencies and incidents of peace he. seems incongruous and fantastic a relic of some bygone age a representative of a social order long since fallen into decay. But mass one hundred thousand such as he into an army, carefully ranked, thoroughly disciplined and supplied with all the requisite enginen- of defacement and devastation, and its majestic power, its terrible significance, are plain even to the admiring gaze of children. So the work of the lonely pioneer, buried deep in the primitive forest, wherein his rude log cabin has just been thrown up, around which he is slowly beating back the empire of shade and savageism by dint of axe and fire, seems petty and casual when regarded by itself; but could we, from some commanding height, some ship of the air, look down at once upon the whole body of pioneers at their daily labour we should recognize in their desultory array the skirmishing line of advancing civilization, the harbingers of intelligence, comfort, thrift, humanity, and religion. The wolf, the boar, the serpent, perishing or vanishing as the pioneer host slowly, irregularly yet inexorably moves on, are now seen to be types of a moral order which civilized society is destined to supplant and replace. I take this to be one chief end of industrial expositions, to make the workingman real ize the essential value and true dignity of his work. The infinite division and subdivision of labour exacted by modern invention and machinery are calculated to obscure these inspiring considerations. The artisan or artificer devotes his days to making, not a whole watch, but a wheel or pinion almost a spring. He may give his life to watch making, yet never see one watch perfected, as the most skilful and valued worker in a factory may spend his years in setting up looms or compounding dyes, and never make one yard of cloth. The Exposition is needed to inspire each with a thorough, cheering consciousness of what has been effected by the combined labours and efforts of all. I gazed with interest on the opening of the first World s Exposition in London twenty- one years ago. Apparently, superficially, the procession of Queen and princes, of dukes and Garter knights, in honour of the efforts and products of smiths and weavers, smacked of grimace and affectation. How could they truly honour manual industry who had all their lives shunned it as a degradation? And yet that parade of feudal trappings and gewgaws did honour to the productions of labour, however blindly and even insin cerely. No prophecy of the auspicious day when swords shall be beaten into plough shares and spears into pruning hooks was ever clearer than that procession of royalty and aristocracy, of plenipotentiaries and gold sticks in waiting to usher in the display of all nations products in the domain of art and industry at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, April 30, 1851. Our work, too, generally compels us to look down, to fir our gaze on something petty and minute, to shut out the view of stars and mountains, and concentrate our thoughts iipon bits of metal or a few pounds of wool or cotton. We work with bowed head and tent frame. We need occasionally to straighten up to expand our chests with full inspi- 652 APPENDIX. rations of the free air of heaven. We need to realize that work has other and nobler ends than the highly needful replenishment of basket and store; that its best result is the skilful, modest, upright, faithful, large-souled workman. Such is the lesson which the Exposition is teaching tens of thousands. The material recompense of labour is indispensable, but the honour paid to the achievements of the highly deserving workman is beyond and above this, as the sky is above the earth. Is or is this all I see in every great Exposition an incitement to that industrial co-operation which seems to me, even though distant and difficult, nevertheless inevitable. Strikes for higher wages, strikes for shorter days, lockouts, trade unions, all suggest to me the radical vice of our mode of determining the workman s compensation. He should manifestly be paid in proportion to the value or excellence of his product. He is ofteuer paid in proportion to the time he manages to consume in creating or fashioning it. Hence eye service, dawdling, and the production of fabrics and wares that look well, but fail to wear or serve well. This cannot always endure, You need not tell me that any essential change is difficult, for I know already that all genuine reforms are exceedingly so; that they are only achieved through suffering and sacrifice, and after repeated failures, You do not frighten me by asserting that co-oper ative industry involves complicated and troublesome account keeping, for I know that despotism is the simplest form of government, and slavery requires less reckoning and bargaining and bookkeeping than any system of free labour. Do not ask me first how co-operation is to be reduced to practice; for I cannot tell. There will be experi ments, mistakes and failures in the early tentative stages of the reform. I foresee that rogues and charlatans will seize upon it in the hope of thereby promoting their own selfish ends. I clearly see all this; but I think I discern a brighter idea stretching away beyond it. Now that the republican theory has been fully applied to government and proved a success, after making all due allowances for drawbacks, I believe the applica tion to industry is only a question of time; that the workers who make clothes or shoes or whatever else may minister to human sustenance and comfort, will learn how to do this as partners rather than hirelings, dividing equitably and wholly the proceeds instead of accepting a share of them as wages. Years, if not ages, may be required to perfect the safeguards whereby the compensation of workers alone may be rendered practicable, beneficent, and secure, and yet I feel assured that the day will come in which he who wants a house built in Cincinnati will apply to a corporation of practical builders, organ ized like any bank or railroad company, bargain with the agent of the corporation as he now does with a master builder or firm, and have his work done at least as well and as reasonable as now, while the stipulated price will be wholly and fairly apportioned among those who have earned it. If you ask, "Where is the capital to be had? 11 I point to the hundreds of millions now deposited in savings banks whereof at least two-thirds belong to workingmen and women, and say, "There it is." The depositors are careful, saving, thrifty people who will not risk their scanty hoards in rash experiments, as in deed they should not; but whenever it shall have been demonstrated that they may as safely invest in co-operative undertakings as lend to those by whom the labouring class are now hired and paid, there will be no lack of capital for such investment, even though the rich should supply none of it. Ours is pre-eminently an age of invention, of indus trial progress. I can remember the time when the steamboat was still a novelty and a fireside marvel; when no mile of iron track had yet been laid on the surface of our planet; when American canals were merely contrivances for circumventing cataracts and of small account anyhow; when no steam-propelled vessel had ever crossed a sea, and when the electric telegraph was as inconceivable as a broad, firm highway to the moon. To mow grass, to cut grain or sew garments by machinery was then unimagined. We exported no grain but that grown near the shores of the Atlantic, its bays and inlets, and our mails were wholly drawn by horses at an average speed of less than fifty miles per day. Looking back at the immense strides of invention and machinery, of steam and electricity, during the present century, and mainly in my day, who can rationally doubt that industrial progress is yet on the threshold of its career: that the inventions of the next half century must far surpass in scope and utility those of the preceding. Happy is the generation just entering upon this stage of being, if its leaders and teach ers shall realize that the noblest achievment towards which its exertions should be TOUR IN THE WEST 653 directed the highest attainment within its reach is a more generous, more enlight ened, more courageous, more devoted generation to follow it, qualified and incited to take up the work which its predecessor has laid down, and bear it on to still greater, grandeur, and more beneficial triumphs. SPEECH AT CINCINNATI, SEPTEMBER 20. The speech of which the following is the telegraphic report was delivered from a balcony of the Burnett House, in the presence of thirty-five thousand people : FELLOW-CITIZENS OP OHIO I am here a guest at the invitation of the Common Council of Cincinnati. It is their desire, as it is my wish, that I should, while their guest, abstain from any remarks which seem to savor of a partisan purpose, and I should have chosen, so to speak, that no one of any party could possibly have taken objection. But there has been made an attack upon me since I came here which I will trust to the hospitality and the generosity of my entertainers to permit me to repel here and now. Last evening at Pittsburgh, in the course of some off-hand remarks to a vast assemblage like this, I took pains to explain the circumstances, the extraordinary, unprecedented circumstances under which I was impelled, in the Winter of 1860, to offer in good faith to submit the whole question of union or disunion to a free, uncontrolled vote of the Southern people. After due deliberation and discussion I said it was my belief then, aa it is still my belief, that if that people had been allowed such free, fair opportunity they would have decided as you would have decided that the Union should be main tained. Those remarks which I made last evening have been misrepresented, have been, I think, perverted into an expression of a present belief, a present conviction, that any State has a right to dissolve this Union at its own good pleasure. Fellow citizens, I utterly repudiate and condemn that sentiment. I do not believe that one State or that ten States, or that even a majority of all the States, has a moral, legal, or constitutional right to dissolve our Union. That Union is founded on a constitution which is a char ter of government, not a mere league. It does not create a league merely, nor a confed eracy, but a nation under a governmeet of limited and defined powers, and of unlimited duration. I believe that the Union is not only destined to be, but was intended to be perpetual, and I believe that our great civil war, if there ever was any reasonable doubt as to the nature of that Union, has settled that doubt forever. That slavery is dead, and that the nation abides forever is the sum and substance of the verdict pronounced through the issues of our great contest. There is no longer a question, there can never again arise a question as to the perpetuity of the Union. The apple of discord, the only thing that ever made any American hostile to his own country and constitution, has utterly perished. Henceforth the American Union abides forever, grounded in the affec tions, in the necessities and in the fervent devotion of the whole American people. If there ever shall again arise a cloud of disunion it will not arise in the South and not in the Southern section of the country. But no such question will or can arise. As per petual as the hills, as solid as the everlasting rocks, the Union of these States abides, and must abide, forever. One sentiment, one purpose animates the American heart, and that is that the Union of the States must and shall be preserved. Now, fellow-citizens, let me say a few words more in regard to your position, your duties and your prospects. Cincinnati may be regarded as nearly the industrial and commercial centre of our present population. What the future may bring forth we can not tell, but to-day this city is nearly in the middle of the great commercial movement, of the industrial activity of the American people. These hills, smiling in their Summer abundance, look lovingly on each other from the North and from the South. This mighty river, which laves your city in its gentle current, should persuade to union and reconciliation. We are to be evermore on people. Let us be a harmonious people, united in heart and hope as well as in geography and in political associations. Let us resolve to culti vate the graces and the charities of fellow-citizenship. Let us resolve that from this city 654 APPENDIX. shall go forth influence to the North and to the South which shall bind the people together in a bond of sweeter and stronger affection than they have ever yet known. Fellow-citizens, I rejoice to stand within the city which has been honoured by holding within its limits the Cincinnati Convention, wherefrom emanated the noblest platform of principles ever presented to the American people. Those principles commend them selves to my judgmeut. They are dear to my heart. If I could do anything to give ascendency, perpetual and complete, to those principles I would gladly do it. If my success or defeat could promote their advancement and commend them to the hearts of this people, I should rejoice alike in that success or in that defeat. I believe they repre sent the best thought, the best purpose, the best aspirations of the American people. As such I accept them, as such I am proud to be in any capacity identified with their presentation. It was not my expectation to be presented as a candidate by that Conven tion. The honour was conferred upon me, and I gratefully and readily accepted it; and I thank you, my fellow-citizens, for the cordiality, the unanimity, for the majestic strength in which you have responded to it. As one of your numbers I take the place in your ranks which has been assigned me, and will endeavour to bear your banner with honour, truth, and justice, wherever fortune may lead and wherever the good providence of God may enable me to carry it. And so, fellow-citizens, unable to make myself heard, I will relieve you from further attention and ask Governor Randolph to speak in my stead. Address before the Chamber of Commerce of Cincinnati, September 21. MK. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER or COMMERCE You will do me the justice to believe that I would not have chosen to appear before you as an instructor, for so it will seem to you with regard to matters which you must understand better, per haps, than I. I am here because I am asked to be here; and, being here, I propose to make to you a few suggestions, which, I trust, will have a practical bearing. I fully comprehend that you are business men, and that this is a business hour, and that whatever is said by me, at any rate, must be very brief. To plunge at once, then, into the middle of the subject, I am one of those who do not feel entirely satisfied with the financial and commercial condition and prospects of our country. I realize that we have just secured very abundant harvests, and that they are a very important element of commercial prosperity. I realize that we have a currency quite abundant in its volumo and acceptable at par over the larger portion of our country. We have many elements of strength; and yet there seems to be also elements or portents of weakness, which ought not to be passed over in silence. You will bear me witness that for the last two or three years we have heard more, felt more, suffered more of a commercial collapse, I might say commercial difficulty from the operations of what are popularly called "rings " than ever before in the history of this, and I think in the history of any country. " Corners " in wheat, corners in oats, corners in pork, corners in gold, corners in stocks, and so on, and so on. Now, gentlemen, I am not here to say that this particular clique which tried to force up prices, or that opposite clique which tried to force them down, was right or wrong in any instance. I arn^ not sufficiently familiar to judge. What I say and what I think you must believe with me, is, that these exhibitions, these ebulli tions, are symptoms of financial weakness, if not of financial disease. They are incidents which are not likely to occur in a perfectly sound and healthy condition of a commercial business, and the currency of a country. Well, we get on with them as well as we can, or, rather, we chase one away and another soon presents itself, and every now and then, in the great commercial centre where my work has been carried on, there comes a superjor corner, some kind of a "Black Friday," or something that threatens a commercial disaster a general disaster and then appears the Secretary of the Treasury, with his horns of plenty, and he lets loose something. He either buys stocks, or he sells gold, or he does both. He puts us at ease for a little time again. Now I am not here to decide that that is not the best he can do. I don t know about that; but I do insist that the business of the country ought not to be in a condition to require this continual application of something artificial, something let down from above; that there should be a state of things wherein business men and TOUR IN THE WEST. 655 business Interests should take care of themselves, and not require the continual interpo sition of some public authority in such a dictatorial form. Some men are swamped when he appears and other men are relieved. Perhaps the greatest good to the greatest number is accomplished, for aught I know, but I want to see a state of things when the Government is not continually called upon to help us out. It reminds me of the state of things that existed in my earlier days, when, every once in a while, Mr. Nicholas Bid- lle was called to Wall street in about the same capacity that the Secretary of the Treasury- is now, to put his shoulder to the wheel and lift us out of some mire, or ward off some catastrophe. I think we ought to be able, that you, gentlemen, ought to be able to d-rvise the ways and means, not only of getting us out of one particular corner, but of preventing corners in the future, rendering them impossible, or, at all events, disastrous to their contrivers. Now, I am supposed to be a man of isms, or, what is the word? a man of hobbies on this subject. Some men imagine that I am a very furious demander of the immediate resumption of specie payment. My opinion was, years ago, and I have seen no reason to change it, that when we had one hundred and twenty-five millions of money in the Treasury, mainly gold, and when we had a revenue exceeding the necessary outlays of the Treasury by more than one hundred millions per annum, that we were then in a con dition to resume specie payments; that If the Government had chosen to say: " We will resume we take our greenbacks as gold, and we receive them as gold," that there would have been no difficulty in making that resumption under that state of things. I have seen the Bank of England resume. I have known banks of our country to resume with a very much less with a very much smaller proportion of available assets to the liabil ities than the Treasury of the United States had at that time, so that it seemed to me to be a feasible thing; but we did not resume because the people I mean the business people did not want to resume, and in my judgment that reason will operate just as well next year, or two years, five years hence, as it operated then. It ic my judgment that we are likely to resume; I don t know when, but not in any near period of time. Then, I say, if we want to resume we need all the resources we had then and we ought to have husbanded them carefully ; but if we were not able to resume as yon, and I know wo were not, for a long time to come, then it seems to me a business policy was required of the Government that is to pay out all its gold, all its treasure beyond a fair working balance, reduce its debt by so much, stop the interest, and leave the gold and the currency in the hands of its business men, instead of holding it up in the Treasury to make one of these periodical (the conclusion of this sentence was lost in applause.) But I am not a dogmatist. I do not pretend to present this as a matured and settled conclusion. What I do here ask, what I ask of this chamber is to originate an inquiry and investigation by men of business and capital as to where the proper remedy for these disorders of which I speak is to be found. Let us be calm about it. Let us take time. Let us investigate slowly, carefully, and let the business men of the country come to a conclusion as to the proper remedy not for a particular disorder to-day, but something which shall be a protection against the periodical recurrence of these disorders. This ia what I would have the business men of this country do. Look at the matter as a disease. Not at one particular symptom, but at all the symptoms, and determine just what and where is the remedy. I venture to say that if the men who compose chambers like this will agree upon what the remedy is, they can have behind them the press of the country, with scarcely an exception, and the public sentiment of the country, and whatever shall seem to them, after mature deliberation, after careful discussion, the true cure for our financial disorders and dangers will be accepted by the general judgment of the country and carried into effect. This is all, gentlemen; and with these few remarks I thank you for your patient attention. Speech at Dayton, Ohio, September 24. FELLOW-CITIZENS OP DAYTON I have but a few moments which can be spared to address you, and I entreat you to maintain perfect silence in order that at least a few of you can hear me. Thus far, since I left home, I have spoken for my country, her unity and her peace. I have said very few words for myself. On this occasion I propose to notice one or two of the calumnies which have been aimed at me. I take up the Dayton 656 APPENDIX. Journal, of this morning, and find myself there credited with saying at Vicksburgh, last year, that " I hope the time will come when the soldiers that fought with Lee and John ston will occupy as proud a position in the hearts of the American people as the soldiere who fought with Grant and Sherman." No such words as these ever escaped my lips. No such thought as that ever entered my heart. What I did say, speaking of that war- wasted, heart-broken people is this: That I trusted the day would come when the soldierly qualities and military genius of Lee and Stonewall Jackson would be regarded as part of the heritage of the American people. That they would be spoken of as Amer ican soldiers who, though in a cause which I think a bad cause, illustrated the military capacity, the genius, the energy of the American people. For, after all, fellow-citizens, they were our mistaken countrymen, our misguided countrymen. Our brave, but fatally erring, countrymen. They are dead, and are now our dead countrymen. I said that, and if any man grudges that little word of consolation to that heart-broken people, let him vote against me. One word more, fellow-citizens. At Pittsburgh, last Thursday evening, I saw fit to explain the condition and circumstances under which I was induced, in the winter of 1860-1, to propose that in preference to giving up the Territories to slavery on the one hand, and the country to war and desolation on the other, I for one would submit, I said, to the disunionists: You claim to be the South. I deny that the great mass of people living in the Southern States desire to break up this great, glorious Union. Now, I ask you to let us come before this people, discuss the question, tell them what the Union is as it is, and what it does for them, as well as for us, and let them decide by their votes, when there has been no bloodshed, whether they would stay with us or go away, and I will respect their decision. I said then what I believed to be the truth, and I say it now, after looking it all over, that between the peril of losing the Union in a bloody civil war, and losing the Union by the rote of the Southern people, the former peril was very much the greater. That I do believe. But I never proposed, never imagined, that now, after all the questions were settled and the fight was over, we would go back and submit the question whether it was to be a Southern Confederacy or not. That has all passed away. There is no more a disunion party. A few individuals are stolid, and obstinate, and per verse. I would desire in nowise to aggravate their bitter feelings. I will trust to time to soothe them; but I do not believe, do not imagine, that one State or twenty States have any legal, moral, or constitutional right to dissolve this Union. Men who are now fighting me did say they had such a right. They said so then, and on the side of slavery they made greater advances toward the South than I ever made on the side of liberty. But I do insist that all questions about disunion are now as dead as the question of American dependence on the British Crown. They have all gone away, and he who now undertakes to tell you that the Southern people are trying to dissolve the Union, or that I want to let them go, simply dares not meet the real issues before the country. He is trying by falsehood and misrepresentation to prejudice and mislead you with regard to the great questions of the day, these questions concerning reconciliation. We are one people, and shall ever more remain one people. Shall we be a harmonious people? Shall ours be a Union cemented only by bayonets, or shall it be a Union of hearts and hopes and hands? I am for the-Jatter Union. I am here not to exult over victories won in the late war. I am here not to meet one particle of prejudice or triumph. I do not propose to do anything that shall make the Southern people feel bitterly that the union between us is one of exultation on our part and humiliation on theirs. I think he is not a patriot who would try to intensify the bitterness and soreness that those who fought against us must feel in view of their great defeat. Theirs is a lost cause, but they are not a lost people, for they belong to us. They are our brethren. They have come back to us under compulsion, if you say so. But I wish to change that compulsion into affection, for that is statesmanship. That work I am seeking as far as I can to do. Fellow-citizens of Ohio, since the day I left home I have made a great many little speeches like this, but no man has heard from me one word implying disrespect or dis paragement for that eminent citizen and public servant, the President of the United States. No word from me has thrown disparagement on his public services, or dishonour on his high office. I am among you, a citizen, speaking to citizens of the United Statea of things that concern your well-being and mine, because they concern the welfare and TOUB IN THE WEST. 657 greatness of our common country. I beseech you so to act in the struggle now upon ua, BO to vote that your acts and your votes will tend to bind up the wounds of our country. I beseech you so to act, and speak, and live, that your victory shall be a tearless victory ; that no one shall feel humbled because of your triumph; that no man shall be trampled under your on-rushing feet. So friends, in the hope and trust that Ohio, like Indiana and Pennsylvania, will pronounce on the 8th of October for a genuine peace, I bid you farewell. Speech at the City of Cleveland, September 24. FELLOW-CITIZENS I desire at this time, and from this place, to address a few earnest words to the advance guard of liberty and old time Abolitionists of the Western Reserve. I desire to ask them in all sincerity: Brethren of the other days, do you rejoice or do you regret that the Democratic party have abandoned all hostility to equal rights to men of every colour? Do you rejoice in that? Or do yon regret it? For my part, fellow-citizens, I do most heartily rejoice in it. I find in that fact an earnest of a better day for our country. I rejoice in it as the drying up of the fountain of all bitterness. I rejoice in it as opening a new era of peace and harmony for the long-distracted people of this country. Ah! but they say to me, "You are a candidate. You rejoice in it because it seems to aid or to promote your prospects of an election." Well, fellow-citizens, I tried most earnestly four years ago to have the Democratic party take the step it has now taken. I then declared it should nominate Chief Justice Chase as the candidate for President. Not that I cared so much for the man, but that I did anxiously hope and wish that the Democratic party would step upon the platform where it stands now. A platform of pure Democratic principles. A platform which proclaims and maintains equal rights of men regardless of colour. If that party had chosen to do so four years ago, by nominating Chief Justice Chase, this country would have been very far advanced, very much further advanced on the right road than it now is. Hence, for my country s sake, for the sake of its peace, its advancement, its prosperity, I didgreatly desire that the ground should be taken which has been taken now. Fellow-citizens, they tell you that the Democratic party is not sincere in taking this ground. Why not sincere? What is to be gained by false practices? It alienated some supporters; it cooled the zeal of others. Why should a great party pretend to be a thing it is not? I tell you, Abolitionists, that such a step once taken never can be recalled. There can be no advantage, there can be no purpose, in taking the backward track. But no, that backward step will never be taken. The shadow will not go back on the wall. Whatever may be the result of this present elec tion, whether it shall result one way or the other, there will never again be a serious question as to the rights, the equal rights, of all citizens under the Jaws of this Govern ment, and I, who have grown old, who have witnessed during a quarter of a century a controversy respecting the black men and their rights, I do earnestly desire that this struggle should cease, and cease now. I hope I may live to see the end of it, and hear it Baid that whatever the people may divide upon, or quarrel about, they have done with conflict, they have done with controversy, concerning the equal rights of man. For my part I do greatly rejoice that this movement has been made. I rejoice that my name, however humble, has been identified with it. I shall rejoice in success, if success crown our efforts. I will rejoice in defeat, if defeat shall be encountered, that through the presentation of my name as a candidate an end has been made of all contention con cerning the equal rights of man. Aud I ask the old-time Abolitionists of the Western Reserve whether they ought not to rejoice with me. Fellow-citizens, it is time that we were done with this by-gone controversy. There are fi^reat questions concerning labour, the rights of labour, the interests of labour, the duties of labour, that struggle now for public attention. We want to commence this discussion. We want to know, to comprehend, to realize what measures are necessary and expedient to advance the interests and secure the rights of honest, useful labour. In order that we may do this, we desire that the rubbish and debris of the old-time controversy be swept out of sight. There is no longer reason for contention concerning the rights of the black man. They are secured by the Constitution. They are bolted, riveted, fastened, double 42 658 APPENDIX. fastened, by the Constitution. All we need now is a cheerful acquiescence of the peopla of all parties in the Constitution as proclaimed, and secured by that we shall have it. Fellow-citizens, to-day a portion of our citizens are disfranchised, are denied a voice in the government of this country because they were rebels eight or ten years ago. I think that an unwise proscription; an injurious proscription. I ask let it be swept out of the way, that it be finished and put aside, iu order that the questions of taxation and finance, of labour, and the reform of labour may come to the front. The instincts of the people on every side say so. We cannot begin to quarrel about tariffs, and finance, and currency until we have first settled that all the white men of this country should have equal right* with all the black men. Let us decide in this election that there shall be no more a pro scribed class, no more a disfranchised class, no more, as in Arkansas, twenty thousand men, white men, citizens, who have willingly conformed to all rights of the Government, and are still denied by an infamous registration board, and by State legislation any voice in the disposal of their property. Debts are charged up against their property by the votes of men who have no property, and they, the planters of that great State, are denied any voice in the government which taxes and robs them. I demand for them, and for every American, enfranchisement. I demand liberty. We have liberty now for those who were once in slavery. I demand liberty for those who were never our slaves and aro now our countrymen. Give us universal amnesty along with impartial suffrage, which, we have, and we will sweep out of sight the rubbish of past contention. We will begin anew on the common platform of equal rights, a new race, a new progress in liberty, a new progress in prosperity. We will as one people, maintain our Union evermore, and rejoice in the prosperity, in the greatness, and in the glory of the American Republic. Speech at Corry, Pennsylvania, September 25. FELLOW-CITIZENS A Presidential election necessarily brings into review the action of your Government, and the measures for good or ill which effect the prosperity of the country, and the welfare of the people. Not that A or B, who may be persons of very moderate capacity and still more moderate worth, should be President or hold some other office, but that you, the people, should look over the whole ground, see what is right and what is amiss, and use your best efforts to correct evils, and to sustain what is good. Now, yon are aware, as well as I am, that our country has not been reconciled and regu lated, and brought into peace and order, and that nearly eight years have elapsed since the war ended, and peace and security ought to have been attained much sooner than this. Look at the difficulties and obstacles to be overcome now. First, in point of urgency, was what we call the Ku-Klux outrages of the South. Certain persons, mainly open rebels and rebel soldiers, conspired together, formed themselves into companies- or organizations of some kind, and in hideous disguises paraded the country, I mean certain portions of the Southern country, abusing and maltreating innocent, quiet peo ple, mainly black men. I don t mean to say there were not excuses and provocations for these outrages. There were, but I say there is no justification for any such conduct as that. The pretence generally was that what they called the carpet-bag governments were abominable. True or not, that is no excuse for hauling quiet people out of their beds at midnight and subjecting them to^all manner of indignities. So, then, I did not recommend particular or extreme measures, but I said no doubt it is the duty of the States to protect their citizens respectively, and to put down all lawlessness. But sup pose they don t, or can t, or won t? The people are entitled to protection, perfect protec tion. If the State Governments won t give it there must be a power somewhere that will give it. We look after a man who is not more than half a citizen, whom a foreign Gov ernment oppresses, and all the power of this great nation is put to work to protect that man. He may perhaps have only declared his intention to become a citizen, but all the cannon and all the force we can command are employed for his protection. Our Govern ment must have the power to protect its own people at home as well as abroad. So I said a year ago last epring: Let the President tell us what sort of legislation he needs to put down these Ku-Klux, and I will back him out to the full extent. He said what he needed. Laws were passed, and after all they did the work. You have not heard of any serious Ku-Klux outrages since those acts were passed. Since those acts were passed. TOUK IN THE WEST. 659 a year and a half ago, nobody has heard of any serious outrage there, though there have been trials in one or two States, especially in North Carolina, yet these are trials for offences committed two or three years ago, long before the act was passed. So the work was done. The Ku-Klux conspiracy was crushed out by the act of Congress, and although these outrages occurred in a very narrow district of territory, they discredited and dam aged all the Southern people who may be suspected of any sympathy with those who made the outrages. But still there remained that other element of discord and discontent at the South which was called "the carpet-bag thieves." When we went into the South with our armies, a number of shrewd, unscrupulous men, undertook to make themselves rich out of the property and misery of the vanquished South. They made themselves special leaders and champions of the black people there; they organized Union Leagues and other secret societies, of which the first effect was to combine all the black men of the South in a consolidated phalanx, and thus give the direction, real government, and man agement of these black men to these white leaders who were called the carpet-baggers. And they nominated those for office, and they made themselves Governors and Con gressmen, and Secretaries, and soon, through the machinery of legislation, using simple, ignorant negroes, some as legislators, they commenced measures of gigantic robbery. In the first place they made for themselves great salaries, such as the poor Southern States were unable to pay, and the} pretended to start a great many internal improve ments, and issued bonds in beha f or in aid of these improvements, and they contrived to steal the bonds, sell them for the most they could get, make no improvements, and leave the States war-wasted and desolate before, overwhelmed with debt. I doubt whether these debts ever can be paid, and I am sure there is very little disposition to pay them among the people who own the property of the South. They regard them as frauds, sim ple iniquity imposed upon them, and the charges unjust burdens they cannot bear. I apprehend if they were to sell out all the property in South Carolina to-day, it would not very much more than pay these pretended debts, which have been imposed upon her by the carpet-baggers who rule the negro legislators. Some of them negroes, and all of them being without property, were without proper responsibility. There is an element of discord and hatred, a general belief on the part of the Southern people that we of the North sent these villains down there to rob them, and by enfranchising the blacks, and other measures of reconstruction, we have delivered the people bound hand and foot into the clutches of these corrupt carpet-baggers, to be robbed at their mercy. Now let me try to give you an illustration of the way the thing works. Men say, sup pose they do steal, what can we do about it? You pretend to be in favour of local self- government. They have got it, and these local self-government authorities are the rebels. What are you going to do about it? I will tell you of a case. In the year 18(58 the State of Arkansas, among other States, was reconstructed under our Republican Legislation. They reconstructed a very large portion of her people ; probably one-half of the whole peo ple being disfranchised, not allowed to vote; that is. the poor whites, whom they regarded of no account, voted, while property-holding whites were disfranchised, and allowed no voice in the administration of their Government. So, then, Powell Clayton, a Kansas man, who came in there as the commander of a regiment of our soldiers, or else following in their wake, and one of the leaders of the carpet-bag crowd, was elected Governor of the State. The Constitution then prescribed that all whom Congress had disfranchised, should be denied the right to vote. Well, Congress proceeded very properly, though tardily, to take off this disfranchisement, so that ninety-five or ninety-nine, certainly ninety-five, out of every hundred of those who had been disfranchised as Rebels were re-enfranchised by Congress. But the carpet-baggers said no. Congress has nothing to do with it. Our State Constitution, which we framed in 1868, disfranchised these men whom Congress had there disfranchised. Now Congress takes off the ban; we do not. We are going to keep them tight. They appoint this Governor Clayton; he appoints the Board of Regis tration for every county, and from the decisions of that Board there is no appeal, and they put in the registry just whoever they please. I met thirty or forty citizens of Arkan sas in Louisville two or three days ago. and they told me that over twenty thousand of the property-holders and laud-owners of Arkansas were now disfranchised, kept off the register; not that the laws require so many, but where the laws did not, the Registers 660 APPENDIX. did. They had the power, and they would put on such as they chose, and no more; and when they found they were not going to get the majority without striking off, they would strike off, so as to have the vote kept right. That is the government under which the people to-day are living there. The land-owners ought to be enfranchised, hut they are disfranchised hy the carpet-bag Government, which means to carry the Electoral vote of the State against the people of the State, by keeping a large part of the people dis franchised ; and at the late Grant State Convention, it was solemnly resolved that none of these disfranchised people should be allowed to vote this fall. After that they would see about it. Let me tell you how it operates. In the year 1870 they had their second election under the State Government, not for Governor, but for Legislature and Congress. Powell Clayton, the Governor of the State, and controller of all this election machinery, appointed the Registers all over the State, and was a candidate for United States Senator. It was a safe thing. He would be elected under that system, lirst making all the Registers and then putting on just as many voters as they saw fit. Suppose you have a title to be on the registry, they will not put you on, and you cannot get on, and there is no remedy for it. There is another hitch beyond that: Powell Clayton, Governor, and his subordinates are the State Board of Canvassers, with absolute power to reject whatever votes they see fit, and bring out such a result as they choose. So then, it appeared, when the Legislature was chosen, that it was largely Republican, yet Mr. Clayton had not got control of it enough to elect him for the Senate. He has to throw out votes as President of the Board of Canvassers. He dis cards these votes, those that he pleases, so as to bring in the candidate that he please*. For instance, in one county there was an anti-Clayton ticket. He throws votes out, three-fourths of the Republican vote. He throws out these and brings in the Democratic ticket, rather than have the Republican ticket elected, which was against him; so he goes through like this, and makes out a Clayton majority, which elects him to the Senate. But in doing this, you understand that you cannot reject the votes cast for one officer, and admit the votes cast by the same voters for another officer. That is perfectly plain. If you decide that this poll is not a legal poll, you have got to throw it out for all pur poses. So Mr. Clayton throws out the votes of the Republicans there, because they were electing an anti-Clayton ticket, and thereby defeats Thomas Bowles, the Rebublican can didate for Congress, and elects John Edwards, the Democratic candidate. John Edwards comes forward with a certificate as good as anybody. Mr. Bowles don t like it. People generally don t. He goes and contests the election, and, with abundance of testimony, proves that these votes of his, thrown out for the sake of electing Clayton, were not rightfully thrown out, and a Committee of the House of Representatives takes the case up, considers it from top to bottom, and says unanimously, without a dissenting voice, the people elected Bowles. He must have the vote; so that on the vote it goes up to the House, which, by an equally unanimous vote, says the same thing, and Bowles is put in. It was not because he was a Republican, because they fought just the same thing in Texas, where they turned out William T. Clark, a Republican, and put in D. C. Giddings, a Democrat, because he was elected by a good majority, and there was not a dissenting voice in the Committee or in the House. So then you see you are not resting on my story about Mr. Clayton and his government. Here is a unanimous decision of the Committee on Elections, that Mr. Clayton had fraudulently returned the votes, and had returned the man not elected; then rejected and ousted the man who was elected. This is not a state ment, but a conclusion by the highest possible authority. Well, gentlemen, the Federal Court was convened and held a session two or three months after these outrages, of which I tell you, by Clayton and his board, and the Grand Jury of that Court examined into these facts and indicted Powell Clayton and his confederates for this crime. Mr. Catter- eon, appointed by General Grant, as good a Republican as ever lived, was going to put Mr. Clayton through, and the State s Prison was before him; but now Clayton and his satellites walked on to Washington, and induced General Grant to remove that righteous and faithful District Attorney, put one of Clayton s tools in his place, and that is the end of the prosecution. That was the end of the whole thing, all gone to rack and ruin. Mr. Clayton goes swimming into the United States Senate instead of into the State s Prison. You are asked what the Government has to do about it? I will tell you. They all back themselves right on the power at Washington. They all cry out, "Hurrah for TOTJK IN THE WEST. 661 Grant; give him two terms." Give him twenty terms if yon like. These other fellows are disloyal. They are one-term men. Put them out, they say; turn them out and put in those men who will stand by Clayton and his board, and it is done. I want you to see that this thing goes all back on you. People of the United States, you are sustainers of these iniquities. If we had a Government in Washington which frowned upon the evils, that Government would stop all this business in a short time. The men who are robbing South Carolina to-day would be on a dead race out of that State two days after they had heard that another Government was about to be installed at Washington, just as Bullock, of Georgia, resigned and ran away; so these men would all get out if they did not feel that the mighty arm of the Federal Government was out stretched for their protection and defence. It is against this iniquity that we fight. The men who corrupt elections in Arkansas are all shouting for Grant, shouting and working for him, and they are gaining immunity for their crimes. Fellow-citizens, I do not know what will be the decision of the people in the contest now before us. Everybody else is confident that what they wish will be the result. I only know that if the people could only look into these wicked Governments at the South, and see them as they are, they would not longer be sustained by the public senti ment of the North. I know that, and I believe that light is creeping in. Two-thirds of your journals have never told the people what the truth is about these "carpet-bag vil- liana." 1 They suppress the facts. They conceal the facts, and, as a consequence, the people do not understand to-day. They say what reconciliation do you want? They say we are reconciled. What more do you want? Now, I am not reconciled to have such robbers govern the States. I want Governments that honest men can afford to be recon ciled to. I plead for reconciliation. The Southern people have greatly sinned, in my judgment, and have greatly suft ered. I have a friend who went down to South Carolina and spent some time there and came back. He is a very zealous Republican, and he said that he had seen many things he did not like. He said: " I saw a man who, when the secession began, was living in Paris on an allowance from his father of 25,000 a year. He is now a clerk to a negro Assessor in Charleston at $2 a day, and mighty glad to get it." Now, such things do take place, and I do think that the people have suffered a great deal. I think that it is time that a generous hand was outstretched to aid them. I think it ie time that the Northern people should say: " Countrymen at the South, we have insisted that all blacks shall be enfranchised, and they have been enfranchised. Now, then, we insist that you shall be enfranchised likewise." There are twenty thousand disfran chised this day in Arkansas, and the only hope of carrying that State for Grant is to keep them disfranchised. That is one of their purposes to keep them disfranchised; and all over the South there are such iniquities as this, I think, hiding from the light. Now, then, we want the Northern people to say to the South, to those who have been our ene mies: "Let us forget the past; let us come together on one common platform. We wipe out all disfranchisement, all proscriptions; stand with us on a common platform of nationality, equal rights, equal law for all the people, and let us all again take hold and push forward this mighty Republic on its career of greatness and prosperity." This is what I think the people ought to say in this election, and make the Southern people feel that, though they have been very wrong, that we have forgotten all that wrong, and are now prepared to take hold with them, and to carry forward the de stinies, to promote and advance the greatness and glory of this country as one united, fraternal people. To that end I laboured: that end I seek, and I do believe that the movement, "the Cincinnati movement," of which I am the exposition and symbol before you, is calculated to pro duce that end. To secure the end, I am individually nothing, but that movement was right, and was not a moment too soon. I implore the whole people to take care and reach it successfully and triumphantly. Speech at Erie, Pennsylvania, September 25. FELLOW-CITIZENS It was about forty-one and a half years ago that I, a rather green country boy, with all my worldly wealth done up in a very small bundle, walked into this place one winter morning, looking lor work by which to earn my bread. I found employ ment and kindness in the sen-ice of Mr. Sterrett, in the Erie Gazette office, for six 662 APPENDIX. months, and those six months are among the pleasantest of all the months I now recall. I tried to be, fellow-citizens, while I lived here, a diligent, faithful, correct, though not very rapid type-setter, and I trust that in my humble sphere I made some friends and 110 enemies. I was a little given to political reputation, which seemed to me rather a pecu liarity of the place, for I never saw so many red-hot politicians in any other place 1 have visited as in Erie forty years ago. I still trust I gave no one just cause of offence. I am eure no one who differed from me has laid up against me anything I said during my Bojourn here. Well, the time came when there was no work here for me to do. I would gladly have remained for .years, perhaps for all my lifetime, but work failed, and like too many others I set my face toward New-York, thinking in that great city, as so many others have mistakingly thought, I could not fail to find employment. I went there, and though for some years my hope was very slight, it often seemed that I could find means to stop but a few weeks only, still I was able to hold on, and after ten years I gained a footing there that is likely to abide. I have, fellow-citizens, been at work there forty years as a printer and editor the trade which I had learned and to the perfection of which I had always aspired. I have been reasonably successful there. That is to say, though I have not amassed wealth, probably never shall do so, 1 have always been generously subsisted. My labours, which have been constant and arduous, have been fairly remunerated. Now old age begins to creep on, I do not feel, in spite of all the bitterness, ill spite of the proscription which I have encountered by over-many old friends with whom I have seen cause to differ, to-day I feel tolerably cer tain that so long as my right hand shall not forget its cunning 1 shall be able to earn .a decent existence without pulling up my stakes and making another experiment of a place and chance to live well. Fellow-citizens, 1 feel deeply grateful to the many old friends whom I met in Erie these many years ago. The greater number of those I knew and loved then have passed away. "We who remain are few. We who loved each other then are few. A new generation has formed up here in Erie, so thai probably four-fifths of all whom I knew and loved when I took up my bundle and started out of Erie, forty-one years ago, are not living now. You are a new generation, but I know Erie. I know her spirit, I know her liberality, I know her readiness to afford generous appreciation to the motives and purposes of those ehe has known and esteemed. So I feel sure that when the bitterness and passions of the day shall have passed away, I may return to Erie and reunite some of the ties of friendship which latter occurrences have somewhat tried, but which I am sure they have not totally separated. I have kind memories of Erie, and I trust some that are here have gentle remembrances of me, so that in the future, as in the past, I shall come to them with open hand and a hearty smile, and be with them as I was in the days gone by. Now, then, a few words I will say a few words with regard to our political condition. I have differed with old and dear friends. I have differed for years past with them. It has gradually grown. I had a very early and a very ardent liking for the Republican party. Those principles were nothing new to me. I held them, cherished them, long before there was any such a party; consequently when the time came when the old Whig party should perish and disappear. I was one of the first to step out from under that ban ner, and link my efforts and my fortunes with the new party, whose great leading, funda mental purpose, was the preservation of the Federal Territories from human bondage. I worked with that party till all of its purposes had been accomplished. The Territories were saved and saved forever. The Union being assailed, was defended, and thoroughly, absolutely, finally rescued from peril. Slavery, which, in my judgment, had been the great curse and the great danger of the country ever since its foundation, a growing peril, an enormous evil, has passed away with the rebellion. Now, then, I said the time has come when, with slavery and the rebellion gone, what shall hinder us from being ever more a thoroughly united and fraternal people. I did not even curse those who fought against us, for it seemed to be very likely if I had been South as they were, educated as they were to believe slavery the highest good, I might have acted and thought as thev did; but the evil having passed away, I said, now let peace and friendship reign. Well, there came obstacles. In the first place, I held that the necessity of our position dictated that we should act with good faith; that we should take care of the coloured people of the South, and that they should not be made to suffer in their free estate for TOUR IK THE WEST. 663 our acts. We had emancipated them, and now there was, it seemed to me, a peril that they would be held accountable and made to feel the edge of wrath, and I said we must etand by them. When, in 1866, a very commendable effort was made to reconstruct the country and bring it in harmony without saying one word in behalf of the blacks, I was not ready. It was said, let the States do it. But who are the States? You mean the whites of the States. So I held back, refused to join that movement, because it seemed to me that no guarantee or assurance was given that the black people of the South would be fairly treated. We went on demanding that they should be enfranchised, and they were enfranchised. Their rights are just as assured as yours and mine; they are better assured than those of the Southern whites, for, while there are no black men disfran chised, there are a good many white men who are allowed no voice in the disposition of their own property, while men without property vote it away and mortgage by enormous debt, so that at this hour I do believe there are States in this Union where the mortgage created by unjust and unrighteous legislation, in the form of public debts, salaries, etc., is equal to more than half of the entire value of the property. It amounts to a confis cation of the property. The men who own the property are allowed no voice. They cannot vote, and the men who own no property vote the taxes, and it is now mortgaged until the owners sink into despair. Now, it seems to me that the time has come when we, who have been generous as well as just to the blacks of the South, should begin to be generous, or at least just, to the whites of the South. They were our enemies. They are so no longer. They did oppose the measures which we deemed necessary to the public safety and well-being, but those measures were carried, and they no longer oppose them. They, through the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore, in July last, give an authentic expression of their sentiments. They said we accept the results of the war, we accept emancipation, we utterly repudiate the idea that the slaves are to be paid for or the rebel debt paid, or anything like this. We ask only to be admitted on the com mon platform of American citizenship, standing there equal with those who were once our slaves, equal with yon who were once and now again our countrymen. I think that offer might be accepted. I think the Northern people who fought against them, who vanquished them, can now afford to be generous, and can unite with them under one flag, with one law for rich and poor, white and black, and we of the North will remember only what is good and just, and will clasp hands with our iate enemies, now our country men, in genuine, in hearty, fraternal union. These were my sentiments. You have heard them in the past. You know how often they have exposed me to bitter hostility from old friends. Men could not see that my effort to go bail for Jeff. Davis had nothing to do with ihim. He was but one man. It was an overture to the whole Southern people. There -were millions of men who felt that act as a kindness to their section. For their sake I deemed it wise to do as I did. and so on other occasions like this. There had not been three days passed since the armies of Lee had surrendered till I was pleading with my Northern brethren to treat them with forbearance. I told them you will make a great mistake if yon stain your victory with one drop of blood. [A gentleman here whispered to Mr. Greeley that the train would start in five minutes.] Since I have but five minutes more let me improve them to this purpose. You see men all around me who say I shall be defeated. But I cannot be defeated. I may not succeed as a candidate, but the effort I am making to bring the people into more trusting relations with each other cannot fail. It must succeeed. This day men are on the stump all over the country trying to prove that Grant has been more magnanimous towards the Southern States than 1 have been. I don t want to contradict that. I want the two parties to take a running race to -Bee which can be the most magnanimous and generous. That is a part of this contest. Suppose I am beaten. They cannot go back on the record I have made any more than the record which the party made at Baltimore. If I were beaten to-morrow, yon would find them coming in next winter with a bill of nearly universal amnesty, so then in a few years we will drag them up to it. Do your duty, therefore, citizens of Pennsylvania. Do whatever you think right and best, and believe that out of all this strife and conten tion, this bitterness and proscription, a Divine Providence is working out beneficent and glorious ends for the future of our country. 664: APPENDIX. Mr. Greeley made several more speeches in Pennsylvania on his home ward journey ; but the foregoing will, I trust, amply suffice to demonstrate the remarkable character of this canvass. The reports of the speeches are those sent to the country by telegraph, and are in most instances abbreviated. I have used these in order that I might, in the space which I could properly use for the purpose, give as much as possible of the sub stantial portions of these notable addresses. In his famous examination by the Committee of the British House of Commons on the newspaper tax, Mr. Greeley said, it will be recollected, that American journals used the telegraph a hundred times as much as the English. One of the most admirable illustrations of the surpassing enterprise of American journal ism was in the reports of Mr. Greeley s speeches during his tour in the West daily sent by telegraph to every portion of the country. Mr. Greeley s own opinion of his "Western tour, and of election proba bilities, may be gathered from a letter he wrote to his friend, Defrees, soon after his return : NEW- YORK, September 29, 1872. MY FRIEND : I have yours of the 25th. I went West under a cloud, but resolved to do my best. I did it quietly and missed several chances to make grave mistakes. I hope I did good; and I feel confident that Ohio as well as Indiana is with us to-day. So is Pennsylvania, but she may be bought; Indiana (I think) cannot, and I hope the same for Ohio. Yours, HORACE GEEELET. JOHH D. DEFRHIS, ESQ., Washington, D. C. APPENDIX E. IN MEMORIAM. Numerous Expressions of Public Bodies, and the Public Press, in regard to Mr. Greeley s Life and Character. UNITED STATES CONGRESS. On Monday December 2, soon after the assembling of the House of Representatives, the following proceedings occurred : Mr. Dawee Mr. Speaker, I think all will concur in the propriety of a public recogni tion of an event so impressive, and so without a parallel in the history of this country, as that which has recently transpired; and I therefore deem it proper to offer the follow ing resolution: " Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That in Tiew of the recent death of Horace Greeley, for whom at the late election more than three million votes were cast for President, a record be made in the Journals of Congress of appreciation for the eminent services and personal purity and worth of the deceased, and of the sad impression created by his death following keen family bereavement." After appropriate remarks by Mr. Cox, of New York, the resolution was unanimously adopted. THE NEW-YORK COMMON COUNCIL. Special meetings of both branches of the Common Council were held on Monday, December 2, to take action in relation to the death of Mr. Greeley. In the Board of Aldermen, Alderman Vance was appointed Chairman pro tern. General Cochrane : Mr. President, I understand that the Board has been organized in view of the event which has shrouded the city with gloom. It needs no elaborate speech to designate the occasion properly. The death of Horace Greeley inclines rather to silence than to speech. Lan guage is feeble to measure the extent of our loss, and certainly, if referable to all that he has done, and to what, if living, he still might do, would better be left unattempted. He was our fellow-citizen. Here was his chosen home, and here were his daily walks. While here he was beloved; it was elsewhere that respect and admiration attended upon him. But beloved by us who knew him, and honoured and esteemed by all who had heard of him, he has nevertheless gone from among us, leaving a name great and renowned. I have the honour to introduce the following reso lutions: (665) 666 APPENDIX. Resolved, That we deplore the death of Horace Greeley. The public, in the interval eince its unexpected announcement, has evinced a just sense of the magnitude of the loss to itself and to the civilized world. His was the wisdom that linked science to daily pursuits, the philosophy that embraced the human race within commensurate benevo lence, the religion that excluded none from its gracious fold. In the quest of truth he was unwearied, in the practice of virtue humble, but stern in dispensing its inexorable laws. With sensibilities as tender as those of a child, yet his purity of heart installed him the censor of every human vice. He was the moral teacher of the age. In affairs a philosopher, in politics a statesman, and in ethics a sage, he wrought them all practi cally into the greatest journalist of our time. Resolved, That we do not forget, in the general gloom, the poignancy of private grief, and we here tender to the surviving family our heartfelt commiseration. Resolved, That Horace Greeley having grown in our city to be the man he was, his obsequies should be so celebrated that the people whom he loved may geneially partici pate therein. We therefore direct that the Governor s Room in the City Hall be pre pared, where his body shall lie in state at public view during Tuesday, Dec. 3, between the hours of 9 A. at. and 10 p. M. Resolved, That it is hereby recommended to our citizens to close their respective places of business and refrain from any secular employment on the day set apart for solemniz ing the funeral rites and ceremonies; that the members of the Common Council will attend the funeral in a body, with their staves of office, and draped in mourning, and will wear a badge of mourning for a period of thirty days ; that the flags on the City Hall and the other pubic buildings be displayed at half-mast from sunrise till sunset, and the owners or masters of vessels in the harbour, and the owners or occupants of buildings in this city, be requested to display their flags at half-mast on that day, and that a joint Committee of live members of each branch of the Common Council be appointed to per fect the above, and, after consultation with the Mayor and heads of Departments of the Municipal Government, make such other and further arrangements as to them may appear better calculated more clearly and impressively to manifest sorrow for the death and reverence for the memory of the deceased. The resolutions were seconded by Alderman Van Schaick, and were unanimously adopted. THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT COMMISSION AT ALBANY. ALBANY, Dec. 5. The Commission to amend the Constitution has adjourned until January 8. Before adjournment the Hon Erastns Brooks offered the following: Resolved, That the members of this Commission, to prepare and propose amend ments to the Constitution of the State, share in the general sorrow of the people at the death of Horace Greeley, so long one of their most distinguished fellow-citizens; and that, fully recognizing his eminent services to the commonwealth, the country, and man kind, there be entered upon the journal of the proceedings this expression of our regret at the great public loss, and our sincere sympathy with the greatly bereaved family of the deceased." Mr. Brooks made the following remarks : Mr. PRESIDENT I trust it will not be deemed out of place, nor out of time, to call the attention of this Commission to an event which, within the week past, has attracted the attention of the people of the State and of the country at large. Coming from the great metropolis of our commonwealth, as one yesterday taking part in the obsequies of the occasion, perhaps I am unduly impressed with the very marked and peculiar sorrow manifested by the people in the death and burial of Horace Greeley. In my long resi dence in New-York, extending over thirty-six years, I have seen no such demonstration there or elsewhere. It was a tribute of a great multitude of living men to the memory of the distinguished dead; honour to a man without title, without office, and all of whose earthly honours now lie in the grave. * * Mr. Greeley was, indeed, a great worker in thought and brain and hand. He loved and served mankind, and found hie best happi- IN MEMORIAM. 667 ness and hereafter, if not here, his greatest reward in serving his fellow-men. He wrote as Franklin wrote with simplicity, force, and effect. He was eminently practical in life and thought. His pen and tongue reached all classes and conditions of people, and l;e laboured for the benefit of all mankind. Though not without ambition, he preferred duty to honourable place, and more than once, against the advice of old friends, he sac rificed high preferment in office, even the highest in the State, by a bold and manly obedience to conscience. He has gone from among us, and in the commonwealth where he lived so long, and whose policy in the past he so largely molded, I trust it is not uu- v iecomiug to pause a moment in our deliberations to pay this tribute to the memory of the dead. The resolution was unanimously adopted by a rising vote. THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE. The National Democratic Committee issued the following circular: HEADQUARTERS OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE, I NEW-YORK, December 3, 1872. ) The National Democratic Convention did, in July, 1872, with a unanimity unprece dented in the history of the party, nominate, as their candidate for the office of President of the United States, Horace Greeley, of New York. Six States cast their electoral vote for him at the late election, and millions of men in other States, where we failed of suc cess, testified their appreciation of his noble character, and the great service he had ren dered the country, by voting our electoral ticket. But Horace Greeley is dead, and the splendour of the political victory achieved by his opponents is now diminished by the sorrow which this sad event has cast upon the peo ple whom he loved, and who regarded him as one of the best, truest, and bravest of men. The lessons of his pure and blameless life will long remain impressed upon the age in which he lived. Every beat in his great heart was in sympathy with humanity in its broadest form; he loved the Government; he loved his fellow-men; and the labours of his whole life were to elevate the condition of mankind. No struggle for liberty, civil or religious, was ever made on the surface of the earth since his manhood began with which he did not affectionately sympathize, and to which he failed to give cheerful and power ful aid. Every day of his life abounded with acts of kindness, of charity, of forgiveness, and oflove. Not his stricken family alone, but a stricken people, sorrow for a loss wholly inscruta ble, and almost unparalleled. The National Democratic Committee, in behalf of the great party who achieved honour by their faithful effort to elect him to the first office in the JGovernment, will do all in their power to honour his name aud memory. AUGUSTUS SCHELL, Chairman National Democratic Committee. The Legislatures of many States, the Common Councils of many cities, a large number of political committees, meetings of Presidential electors in various States, clubs, literary and other societies, passed resolutions of respect and kindly affection for this great friend of man. Preachers of all denominations, in all parts of the country, spoke lovingly of the man who had loved all men. The press, almost without exception, gave to Horace Greeley greater, warmer praise than it had ever before given to any per son. I can make room for only a tithe of these expressions: From The New- York Tribune, December 5. The generation that most misses him is the generation that he finely touched to so fine issues. Thirty years ago two classes of young men awaited him. The first was made up of farmers, mechanics, artisans; industrious and thrifty fellows, strong, honest, and capable, but coarse, narrow, and uncultured. To them The Tribune came as the reve- 668 APPENDIX. lation of a life undreamed of. A life of books, and art, and daily beauty. A life of noble thinking, and large action. They knew labour to be their inevitable portion. They saw how it might become their highest dignity. Into prairie cabin, and frontier hut, and settler s saw-mill, and artisan s tenement went these vivid thoughto of a new thinker, and kindled a wise discontent and a better endeavour. The second class were made up of dilettante and delicate youth. They did not like the smell nor the manners of the commonalty. They doubted, after all, whether a paternal government was not best for the masses. Culture was their shibboleth. Life, at best, seemed a little botched to them. They were persons of the most cultivated distaste. To them came this same Tribune like the sound of a trumpet, like the blast of the north wind. It was full of a rude health and rustic honesty. It shook them off their narrow pedestals and gave them the broad earth to stand on. It taught them that the value of culture was its service to humanity. From these two ranks of men came the first recruits of that great army which Horace Greeley, more than any other one man, raised up for the liberty and the rights of all men every where. The time is coming when Napoleon and Wellington will no longer seem heroic figures in a people s eyes, because the ideas they typified will be seen to have been base and selfish. And in that day the dead journalist, defamed and misunderstood and ridiculed while he lived, will come to tardy monumental honours as the real hero, the human exponent of the divine idea of love. It is common to call him " our later Franklin." But that is to belittle him. There is a likeness in the good-natured shrewdness, the practical wisdom, the pithy speech, the wish to benefit men in homely ways. But the moral nature of the pupil was infinitely broader and sweeter than that of the master; and while the aphorisms of the older sage have a slight taste of copper, a certain two-penny ha -penny morality and exactness, the frugality and abstemiousness which the younger practiced only gave him the larger means of charity, while saving for the sake of saving seemed to him only less ignoble than spending for the sake of spending. More than to most men it was given to him to see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Yet the nation is coming to understand that no success of his was so trium phant as that which, on the fifth of November, we all called a defeat. To have educated a people into such a stern and high love of liberty, that, when it fancied, however blindly, his feet to be turning into strange paths, it should choose to follow his great counsels rather than his great leadership, is such glory as a man might well spend himself to win. There may be an end now of the cruel taunt that his vanity persuaded him to be a candi date, and that he counted on a love and confidence from the people which he had never possessed. The universal grief declares that not his most nanguine friends, not he, him self, dreamed of the real affection that went out to him. Never able quite to keep pace with him, the people had painfully struggled up to a position from which, with larger vision, he had stepped to a higher. When they seemed to deny him, they were his truest disciples. God permits us the high ends we set ourselves, but often changes the means to better. Our leader, and those of us who followed him, believed that his words and his works would convince the people that magnanimity begets magnanimity; forgiveness, repentance and deeds meet for repentance; and love the acts of love. We see now that only his death could be thus eloquent. Beside graves, men are touched with charity. They are swift to offer reparation to the dead for injustice done the living. And the day is not far distant when Horace Greeley s last act, the candidacy that resulted from his passionate desire to lift up the beautiful and prostrate South, and to see the Union reunited and resplendent, will seem the whitest and bravest of a long life s brave deeds. From The New-York World, December 3. Mr. Greeley lived through the most eventful era in our public history since the adop tion of the Federal Constitution. For the eighteen years between the formation of the Republican party in 1854 and his sudden death in 1872, the stupendous civil convulsions through which we have passed have merely translated into acts, and recorded in our annals, the fruits of his thinking and the strenuous vehemence of his moral con victions. Whether he was right or wrong is a question on which opinions will differ: but no IN MEMOKIAM. 669 person conversant with onr history will dispute the influence which this remarkable and eingularly-endowed man has exerted in shaping the great events of our time. Whatever may be the ultimate judgment of other classes of his countrymen respecting the real value of his services, the coloured race, when it becomes sufficiently educated to appre ciate his career, must always recognize him as the chief author of their emancipation from slavery and their equal citizenship. Mr. Lincoln, to whom their ignorance as yet gives the chief credit, was a chip tossed on the surface of a resistless wave. It was Air. Greeley, more than any other man, who let loose the winds that lifted the waters and drove forward their foaming, tumbling billows. Mr. Greeley had lent his hand to stir public feelings to its profoundest depths before Mr. Lincoln s election be came possible. He contributed more than any other man to defeat the compromise and settlement for which Mr. Lincoln and his chief adviser, Mr. Seward, were anxious in the exciting, expectant winter of 1860-1, and to precipitate an unavoidable, bloody war. It was he, carrying a majority of the Republican party with him, who kept insisting, in the early stages of the conflict, that the emancipation of the slave was an indispen- eible element of success. Mr. Lincoln stood out and resisted, ridiculing an emancipation proclamation as a bull against the comet." Mr. Greeley roused the Republican party by that remarkable leader signed by his name and addressed to Mr. Lincoln, headed " The Prayer of Twenty Millions," the etfect of which the President tried to parry by a public letter to the editor of The Tribune, written with all the dextrous ingenuity and telling aptness of phrase of which Mr. Lincoln was so great a maoter. But Mr. Greeley victoriously carried the Republican party, which he had done more than all other men to form, with him; and within two months after Mr. Lincoln s flout ing reply to the " Prayer of Twenty Millions," his reluctance was overborne, and he was constrained to issue his celebrated Proclamation, which committed the Government to emancipation, and staked the success of the war on that issue. This culminating achievement, the greatest of Mr. Greeley s life, is the most signal demonstration of his talents. It was no sudden random stroke. It was the effect of an accumulated, ever-rising, widening, deepening stream of influence, which had been gathering volume and momentum for years, and whose piling waters at last burst through and bore down every barrier. Mr. Greeley had long been doing all in his power to swell the tide of popular feeling against slavery, and it was chiefly in consequence of the tremendous force he had given to the movement that that barbarous institution was at last swept away. It is the most extraordinary revolution ever accomplished by a single mind, with no other instrument than a public jonrnaL From The Chicago Times, November 30. Perhaps no man ever died at a time that made it a task of so great difficulty and deli cacy to estimate fairly and impartially his life and character, as the great journalist whose career terminated on last evening. Had the event occurred one year ago, there would have been but one voice from the press and people of whatever section or party. All would have mourned that a great and noble man had fallen, and that his country and his race had suffered an irreparable loss. But within that time Mr. Greeley has appeared in a new character, and developed a new aspect of his career. In a Presidential campaign that was perhaps without a parallel in the bitterness of feeling and expression that char acterized it, he was one of the chief actors, and thus became the object of unstinted obloquy and vituperation. These angry emanations of partisan strife ought to be hushed with the silence of the chamber of death, and doubtless will be; but it cannot be for gotten that the deceased lost some part of his estate " in the bright fields of fair renown " by his deplorable error in becoming a candidate for the Presidency under circumstances that must have been repugnant to his better judgment and to his better nature. * * * Putting aside, as far as it is possible to put them aside, the facts connected with Mr. Greeley s candidacy, he must be regarded as a man in whose character and career the tendencies for good vastly preponderated. Born in the most humble circumstances, he advanced to a position of influence and respect by industry and the careful and untiring nee of the natural talents with which he waa in no small degree endowed. He was in ome sense a typical American, and represented with his life, while he portrayed with 670 ATPENDIX. his tongue and pen the capabilities of onr institutions in bringing out, the best embodi ments of manhood and advancing the species to a higher plane of development and civilization. The humble, uncouth printer-boy, became the foremost journalist of the land, perhaps of the world, and it will be generally conceded that he wielded the immense power of this position with a heart single to the good of his country and his race. Kindly in all his impulses, honest in all his convictions, after a life of exemplary purity, he has passed quietly away, leaving the world better for his having lived upon it, and inspiring all his race with a disposition to overlook his faults and errors in its appre ciation of his transcending merits and goodness, and in its profound and heartfelt grief that he is no more. From The Boston Post. If there is or can be a consolation for the decease of Horace Greeley, it is that now no obstacle will remain to the universal recognition of his great public worth and his noble private virtues. His clear and industrious brain, his kind, benevolent heart, his active sympathy for the suffering, his eloquent indignation at injustice, his homely truth and honour, his genial nature, the strength of his friendships, the pertinacity and purity of his aims, the high ideals for which he strove in every department of life, and the touching significance of his too early departure from earth, will embalm his memory in the grate ful reverence and respect of his countrymen among the ever-increasing roll of their illustrious dead. From The Troy Press. On Christmas night of 1871 the writer of this article sat beside Horace Greeley at Stein- way Hail, New- York City, where was being given Handel s great Oratorio of "The Messiah." During the major part of the performance he sat apparently lost in thought, if not in a doze, and seemingly oblivious to all that was going on. But when Miss Kellogg appeared and sang the great soprano solo, " I know that my Redeemer liveth," he raised up, his face was suffused with joy, his bright eye was dimmed with a tear, and he listened with that steady and intense earnestness so peculiar to him when interested. When it was finished no hands more loudly applauded than his, no face beamed forth such great satisfaction, and he murmured to himself those grandest of all the words of the world. " I know that my Redeemer liveth." Then again came the absent, preoccu pied look, nor did it change until Miss Sterling sang the contralto recitative, " Then shall come to pass that which is written: Death ehall be swallowed up in victory," when the same joyous look of satisfaction lighted up the face no one could look upon and not love. A few days ago he turned wearily on his bed of pain, and the old light came back as he muttered, " I know that my Redeemer liveth; " a few hours more, and "It is done." Death was swallowed up in victory the victory of a lifetime, fighting for the right over wrong; for truth over error ; for reason over prejudice; for peace and love over war and hate the victory of a well-spent life, entitling a soul to life eternal after death. This is his victory, and he needs no eulogy or monument. The heart-beat of the nation is the one, the imprint of our footsteps on the face of time the other more lasting than marble, more enduring than brass. From The Springfield Republican. Horace Greeley? He is only beginning to live. Every year now will add to his power; will round and heap the measure of his fame. The mistakes which marred his work are already half forgotten ; the work itself remains, and will remain forever an indefeasible possession, an imperishable monument. So, too, the foibles, the weaknesses, the pettinesses which obscured his character scale off now and drop out of sight. The man himself is coming into view at last the real Horace Greeley, with his great active brain and tender heart, his grand hatred of wrong and charity for the wrong-doer, his restless benevolence, and his warm human IN MEMOKIAM. 671 interest in everything appertaining to humanity. As the years pass he will loom up taller and taller. He did not need the Presidency for a pedestal, though he thought he did. That was his mistake. The office might have belittled him; it could not have added a cubit to his stature in the remembrance of his countrymen or in the history of his country. From The Washington Chronicle. The entities of party are buried out of sight: its storm of passiou is hushed. Repub lican, Liberal, and Democrat alike, remember only that the threat journalist, whose name is so closely identified with the country, and whose journal is known wherever the nation is known, is dead. Thus suddenly and unexpectedly to the country closes the life of one of the most industrious and untiring of men. The nation would not make him Presi dent, but it will attend as a mourner at his grave. It did not see Us interest in gratify ing his darling ambition, but it is ready to believe that he meant well for the country when he consented to place himself in a position that his old friends believed fraught with a peril not apparent to him. Of the illustrious trio who have figured so largely in the political history of Isew York and the nation, two have passed away within a very short interval. The third (Mr. Weed), forgetting all the bitterness of an alienation that has continued for a few years, hastened to the death-bed of his old friend to tell him that there was nothing but love in the heart of the living toward the dying. With heavy heart we turn away from the stiffening form to meet as we may the duties that are imposed. From The Baltimore American If the lessons of an untiring industry, of an honourable ambition, of a brain that never ceased to plan, and a hand that was never stayed from executing until the forerunner of death palsied their activity, are worth anything to men who dream of success in life and reward in heaven, there will be a few who will not pause this day to study the story of the existence that has vanished from among us, and to sorrow that it is ended on earth. * * It has been said that Mr. Greeley was the best known man in America. The fact is both a testimony to his substantial qualities of greatness, which created the admira tion and respect of his country, and to those peculiar mental characteristics which gave him a reputation for eccentricity, and inspired that curiosity which greedily swallowed all the details of his life. From The Providence Press. The decease of such a man is a national calamity. * * His life, so eventful, was purely an American life, and only the genius of our institutions could have brought it to such a development. He was intensely a republican after the American model. To him, the purity, the simplicity, the beneficence of our institutions were vital to the prosperity of the country. While he builded all upon the citizen and his divine endowment of in alienable rights, he, nevertheless, claimed for the State all of power requisite to make eacred the law, demanding only equal rights, equal privileges, and equal responsibilities for all. Politically, his whole life confers upon him the just title of a Democratic Repub lican. He believed in a State where the citizen retained the largest liberty, and granted the same to every other citizen. From The Louisville Courier-Journal. Notwithstanding the many copious bulletins which have come from Mr. Greeley s bed side the last few days, the country will find itself ill prepared to read the tidings of his death, which we publish this morning. This is one of the instances where the heart feels most when the pen moves not; for of Horace Greeley it may be truly said that eilence is most eloquent. He is dead, and what remains to be said of him* That he was a man of extraordinary- mental capacity, that he was a man of extraordinary emotional activity, that in every 672 APPENDIX. relation of life he excelled, is known to all men. He had a nature abundant to overflow ing in all the forms and aspects of human kindness. He was large-hearted and sincere a kind man. As a journalist, as book-maker, aa a lecturer, as a writer, as a speaker, he was unwearying and diligent. His life was given to useful industry, and his death will be regarded as in some sort a personal bereave ment by every American citizen, for in spite of the result of the late election no man in the country was better loved. From The Cincinnati Enquirer. Through all the length and breadth of the land the intelligence which our columns contain this morning will carry sorrow and tearful regret. Horace Greeley is dead. Of all the deaths that have come upon the country this is inexpressibly the saddest. None of the elements which beget universal sympathy are lacking. It is not within the power of one man, nor the limits of any one journal, to record, with justice and exacti tude the merits of the great man whose life was yesterday extinguished. For nearly forty years he was a part of the Republic which we honour to-day, and to Ms vigorous mind and active words the people owe more than they will ever recognize, much less pay. A plebeian by birth, he lifted himself through his own exertions to a position greater than that of President, and in his industry, morality, progressive spirit, and comprehen- eive views, he was, without doubt, the noblest type of an American citizen. His life- work will go down to posterity, and in posterity s keeping it will be honoured. From The Cincinnati Commercial. A few weeks ago Mr. Greeley was full of strength, animated by a vast and generous ambition, confident of himself, inspired with the highest faith in humanity and the surest trust in the universal goodness of God; and, even as it was seen that he was doomed to defeat as a canditate for the Presidency, there was plainly growing in the public estima tion the serious and tender respect due to his exalted character and the immense scope and exceeding brilliancy of his faculties, as they had been made better known than ever before during the campaign. There are half-a-dozen historic figures so marked and familiar that they can be drawn by school children with a few strokes of pen or pencil so as be unmistakable. One of these is that of Greeley. This very familiarity may not always be flattering, but it proves that the man has stamped his image upon the world. It seems strange of the four New- York editors, of whom a few years ago all men had heard, and whose reputation gave them national influence, Raymond, the youngest of the four, was first to die, and that Bryant, the eldest of them all, alone survives, Greeley and Bennett dying within the same year. As a news collector and vendor, and in general newspaper management, Bennett dis tanced competition. As a literary man, as a poet of genius, and a gentleman of breadth and delicacy of cultivation, Bryant stood alone. As a man of the world, with accomplish ments that fitted him to adorn public life, Raymond was without rivalry. As a vigorous writer of English, clear cut and meaning business, as a man of thoughtfulness upon sub jects of the greatest gravity, and of strong convictions upon questions of public moment, and of unflinching nerve in doing the immense work that his hands found to do, and, above all, as one who laboured for the good of his fellow-men, unselfish and lovingly, Horace Greeley was not only first in his profession, but the foremost man of his time. From The Chicago Tribune. Mr. Greeley was, by nature and by education, opposed to every system of human injus tice. He tested all questions by inquiring whether it was for the general good, and whether it involved the oppression of others. It was immaterial whether a measure or policy was proposed by his party, by his personal friends, or by his adversaries; if it involved injustice, if it recognized human oppression, if it degraded one man to elevate another, IN MEMORIAM. 673 he rejected it, and no efforts of friends or exigencies of party could induce him to swerve from his convictions of right. Mr. Greeley was intellectually great. He was an incessant student. The whole realm of knowledge was explored hy him. His range of information was extraordinary. He was familiar with all practical subjects. His knowledge was rarely superficial. What ever information he acquired, he sought to make useful to mankind. His mental organ ization was extremely active. He was incessant in his labours. He had travelled much, and each day s journey was to him a lesson filled with information, of which he made practical use. Nothing escaped his notice; nothing was forgotten; his mind was a storehouse, from which he constantly drew facts for the instruction of others. His addresses on non-political subjects have been not only numerous, but have been as pop ular in one part of the country as in another. Like his editorial writings, they have always been marked by vigour of thought and flneney of expression. The last chapter in the political history of Mr. Greeley was the late Presidental elec tion. In the flush of victory, and in the debates over the distribution of the spoils, men may forget to do justice to the vanquished Horace Greeley; but the time will come when his whole action in that campaign will win the admiration, if not the approval, of the American people. Mr. Greeley was made a candidate at Cincinnati, not by the tricks of politicians, but in spite of them. His nomination was opposed by every person to whom the term politician may be applied. His nomination was never contemplated by those who called that Convention. It was an involuntary tribute to his intellectual greatness and personal integrity. It suggested itself to men s minds that, in a contest for reform, these wore commendable qualities. That campaign is too recent to require that its events should be rehearsed; but it may be said that, during it, Mr. Greeley displayed intellectual powers that surprised even those best acquainted with him. His speeches and his letters, all breathing the spirit of Union, Peace, and Universal Brotherhood, will remain among the brightest gems of lit erature so long as patriotism has a place in the hearts of the American people, and intellectual superiority can claim an admirer. Horace Greeley is dead! The words will fill many a heart with pain. While filial affec tion and friendly hands may entomb the body and cover it from sight, the name of Horace Greeley, with the long record of his useful life, will remain to his countrymen, and be by them cherished with that affection which an intelligent people will ever entertain for patriotism, rectitude, and genius. From The Indianapolis Sentinel. In that essential essence of a Christian life, which best reconciles God s handiwork to his inscrutable requirements, Mr. Greeley was a pre-eminent illustration. He accorded the largest liberty to all, and demanded the same for himself. The great ministers indeed all men struggling for the building up of such things as enlightened mankind, or alleviate human woes received instant, hearty co-operation from the untiring philan thropist. He was fond of being before the public, but he never craved an office, and never asked one. Does any one suppose that at any time within the last ten years he could not have dictated his desires to the Republican party? Greeley was greater than office: he was greater than his day and generation, and no better tribute can follow mortal man than that his living illustrated his time, and his life was an incalculable, inextinguishable debt to the nation. From The Missouri Republican. The swift sequel to the Presidential contest of 1872 is the almost tragic end of one of the distinguished leaders in the struggle. Horace Greeley is dead. The fierce resentments of which he was the object, and which were slow and sullen to subside, even after the canvass of which they formed a part, will now at least disappear, since the object of them has departed, and men will be permitted to reconsider and correct their estimates of the actors and their motives in the struggle. There is something mournful and touching in the abrupt and untimely death of ti\ij 674 APPENDIX. distinguished citizen, who, in addition to having been a recent candidate for the Presr dency, has been, for twenty-five years, more actively and persistently before the eyes of the American people than any other man, living or dead. From The New-York Commercial Advertiser. Mr. Greeley was, in many senses, a representative American. A plain boy, born to- chilling poverty, he came to stand before kings, and he wielded a pen whose potential influence had a far wider sway than that of an imperial sceptre. He never forgot hia lowly surroundings, and was never isolated from the sympathies and companions of his early life. He was always the friend of the poor, the advocate of \vdl-remunerated toil, the champion of the oppressed in all lands. No popular uprising in behalf of enlarged freedom or a grander progress ever failed of his ardent support. He was a born Reformer. His impulses always favoured the right. His known beneficence of nature gave him popularity with the masses, who had a personal liking for him, and who showed in Tuesday s slow procession that they deplored the death of a friend. He made mistake* as who has not? but he had a perfect consciousness of his demerits, and never as sumed to be infallible. So, mourned by the whole land, this journalist goes to his grave, his death witnessing the restoration of a general harmony of feeling in all the land such as has not often occurred in our history. From The Chicago Evening Journal, November 30. Horace Greeley was a good man at heart; the impulses of his nature were charitable, generous and manful ; his mind was a storehouse of practical knowledge; his pen was one of the busiest, one of the very ablest, and one of the most influential in the history of modern journalism, a profession in which he has been a recognized leader for nearly half a century, and which he did more to elevate and render powerful than any other man in the world. He had infirmities of character and made mistakes in judgment, but we must remember that the greatest Of men are but human, and that " to err is human." Kindly do those who have been his critics and contestants throw the mantle of loving charity over all his weaknessess, and sadly does the whole country mourn hie death and lament the sorrowful circumstances of his last days among the living. From The Chicago Inter-Ocean, December 1. In the shock and sorrow of a calamity that must be felt and grieved the world over, we gladly unite in the meed to be accorded him: the foremost editor of his time; the greatest master of English the American press could boast; a man of clear thought and wide information; a kind and devoted friend and associate; a man of high moral integ rity; one in whose life, while he lived for others, his cotemporaries may well take pride; from whose death humanity can properly learn a valuable lesson. From The Brooklyn Eagle. He was true to his lights. He believed hi the people. He believed in the right, as it was given to him to see the right. He fought systems, not individuals; and he was the first statesman of his party to know that his principles had won, and that the next thing to wiii was the heart of his enemy, "From the topmost achievement of man," the con quest of his inbred prejudices, " he steps to the skies." Peoples are his mourners. Statesmen and warriors are his pall-bearers. And as long as the race he did most to deliver make the palmetto and the orange tree quiver with their song of redemption, as long as the North he instructed, the West whose resources his pen introduced to man kind, the South which he came at last to understand, and which at the last came to under stand him as long as these sections and their citizens have praise for ingenuousness, emulation for integrity, pity for suffering, pride in thorough work thoroughly done, and a respect for manhood the deepest in the most earnest, so long will endure and magnify the excellence, the incentive, and the exalted example of Horace Greeley. IK MEMO RI AM. 675 From The Nashville Union and American. As a high type of man self-reliant, resolute, upright, and fearless, dignifying labour both by speech and example he is a commendable model to the youth of his country; and, as a statesmen, philosopher, and reformer, deserves a noble niche in the pantheon of the great characters of America. From The Memphis Appeal. It is wholly useless to write any eulogium of Horace Greeley. For months past the press and orators of America have been devoted to disquisitions involving his fame, char acter, and fitness for the highest human office. There is not a mental, moral, or personal peculiarity of the man which has not been closely scanned. In the world s eyes he grew greater as he was more thoroughly well known. Letter from John G. Whittier. AMBSBUBT, 2d Twelfth Month, 1873. MY DEAR FKIEND E. H. OHAPIN Were it in my power I would be present at the last services of love and respect for our dear and mutual friend, Horace Greeley. My heart is full of sadness ; the events of thirty years crowd upon me, all things wherein we have acted together, or differ as friends differ, without impeachment of motive or decrease of respect. All that time I have known him as the educator of the people in liberty, tem perance, integrity, economy, and industry; uniformly taking the side of the poor, enslaved, or suffering of every colour and nationality. When I heard of his death there mingled with my grief a feeling of gratitude that I had been preserved from saying one word, through partizan zeal or difference of opinion, which could add bitterness to his life that I had none of the late remorse over the dead for unkindness to the living which is one of the saddest burdens of humanity. I could not refrain from this hasty expression of my sympathy with one who, more perhaps than any other, has enjoyed the love and confidence of the great Editor. No words of praise are needed: they would be lost in the general eulogy. With common consent he will take his place in the Valhalla of American worthies, as one of the greatest and best. I am truly thy friend, JOHN Q. WHUTIIB. A PUKE AND FAITHFUL SOUL. I. WAS there no other way than this, O faithful Soul, to smite with silence those, Too base for friends, less generous than foes, The unrelenting pack That followed thee, and made along thy track The boor s coarse jest, the slimy serpent s hlsst- Was there no other way than this ? II. Ah, they to whom the hatred of a clan Seems nobler than the honesty of man, Pause, startled at thy grave, And where they sought to ruin, now would save I Their jibes are heard no more, And, stammering into truth, subsides the He: For such a conquest, must thou die, When Life no less had made thee conqueror? 676 APPENDIX. III. Too dear the price we pay Who saw thy patient purpose day by day Unfolded, that the full design might be Embodied Love, incarnate Charity, War s blotches washed away, And God s impartial justice shown in theel We stood beside thee at thy post, And, knowing nearest, loved thee most: We would have given our bosoms for a shield Against the arrows sped To harm thy wise and gentle head. But in thy goodness thou wert triply steeled! We knew as thou didst, never man forbore: We knew as thou didst, never man forgave: Art still, O brain, high Duty s patient slave t O heart, devoid of malice, beat st no more? IV. For all your silenced slanders, give us worse I Renew the loathsome noises of the flght, Forgetfulness of what he did, and spite Of party hate, the Nation s waxing curse, So ye for us preserve One honest man, like him, who will not swerve From what the large heart dictates to the brain; Or, call him back again Who felt, where others planned; Who cast away the mantle of a name And saw his naked nature turned to blame: Who narrower fealties beneath him trod, In stern consistency to God ! There is no child in all the land, But might have craved the blessing of hie hand: There is no threshold but his feet Might cross, a messenger of counsel sweet, Of peace and patience and forgiving love, Of Toil that bends and Faith that looks above! V. In vain ! our cry is vain : We can but turn, pure Soul, to thee again. So much of large beneficence thy mind For all the race designed^ So much thy heart inclosed of brotherhood And ardent hope of good, Thou leavest us thyself in these behind! We can not grieve as those who do not trust: We knew thee nearest, loved the most, And thou, a sacred ghost, Already risen from thy fallen dust, Speak st, as of old, to us : " Be firm, be pure, be just I " BAYABD TATLOK. Gorat, GEKMANT, Dec. 1, 1872. IN MEMORIAM. 677 THE DEAD. As if in lone Franconia one had said, "Alas I the glorious Monarch of the Hills, Mount Washington, is fallen to the vale! The direful echo all the silence fills; The winds sweep down the gorge with bitter wail; The lesser hights rise trembling and dismayed, And the fond eun goes, clouded, to the west; " So to the street, the fireside, came the cry, " Our King of Men, our boldest, gentlest heart, He whose pure front was nearest to the sky, Whose feet stood firmest on Eternal Right; With his swift sympathies and giant might That sealed him for the martyr s, warrior s part, And led, through loss, to nobler victory Lies low, to-day, in death s unchallenged rest! " How we entombed him ! Not imperial Rome Gave her dead Caesars sepulture so grand, Though gems and purple on the pyre were flung I His tender requiem hushed the clamorous land: And thus, by Power lamented, Poet sung, Through stricken, reverent crowds we bore him home When winter skies were fair and winds were still! And for his fame while oceans guard our shores And mountains midway lift their peaks of snow To the clear azure where the eagle soars; While Peace is sweet, and the world yearns again To hear the angel strain, " Good will to men ; " While toil brings honour, Virtue vice deplores, And liberty is precious it shall grow, And the great future with his spirit fill! EDNA DKAK PROCTOR. INDEX. ABOLITIONISTS, assailed by Col. Webb.. 191 Baltimore, the Whig convention of 1844 mention of. 285, 389, 657 Adams, John 49 John Quincy 72, 73, 74, 225 Charles Francis.. 200, 542, 543, 545, 573, 576 Green, of Kentncky 227 Agitators . 647-48 Agricultural addresses, by Mr. Greeley, 160-61 Democratic convention of same year 161-62 of 1848 200 of 1852 286 of 1860 337 of 1872 552-56 Banks, Nathaniel P .. 300, 301, 30&4, 562, 587 one at LaFayette, Indiana 267-68 Barbecues, of 1840 99 Aiken, William 301 thatatDayton in 1842 161 Akerman, Amos T 512 Barnum, Mr. P. T 274 Albany 54 Bates, Edward 198, 306, 338 The Evening Journal 91, 100 Bayard, Thomas F 550 the Regency 104 Bebb, William 99 The Argus 104 Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward 307, 579-81 Allen, Ethan 537 Belknap, Gen. William W ....512, 578,598-9 Almanac, the Whig and Tribune 488 Bell, John 99, 353, 354, 356, 433 Alps, crossing the 248,255 Belmont, August 553-54 the diligence upset 255-56 Benjamin, Park 119, 361 visiting Chamonix 281-83 Bennett, James Gordon.107, 108, 109, 484, 485 America, at the World s Fair 233 Benton, Thomas H 224, 297 American, The Baltimore 671 Birney, James G., an abolition candi- 180 ...569 Ames, Mrs. Mary Clemner Mr. Oakes Amherst, N. H., Horace Greeley s birth place 17 Amnesty, Mr. Greeley s views upon 435, 507, 637-64 Anderson, Charles 99 Andrew, John A 342-43,438" "Anti-Masonry," an account of 73-4f "Bohemian," a 129 Argyle, Duke of 234 Bonner, Robert. 499,500,578 f Aristocracy, of the "cat-fish" kind 133 Books, Battle of the, in Congress. ..219-21, Ashburton, Lord 234 Ashmun, George 227 Association of Labourers... 156, 237, 444 46, 633-5, 636, 651-3 Atkinson, Edward 537 Boutnell, George S 511 Atlantic Ocean, crossing 232,270 Bowles, Samuel 183, 460, 587 Author, Horace Greeley as an author of Breckinridge, John C 306, 353, 354, 356 books 487, 506 Bright, John, the English Philanthro pist and Statesman 127, 484, 496, 613 BAKEB, EDWARD D., of California his Briggs, Mrs. Emily E 180 eloquence, death 309 Brinkerhoff, Jacob 538 (678) date for President 162 Elaine, James G 563 Blair, Gov. Austin 562 Francis P., Sen 104,344,422 Francis P., Jun 509, 533 Montgomery 343, 415, 546 Bliss, Amos, Horace Greeley s first em ployer 38, 39, 44, 45 621-25 "Border Ruffians," raiders in Kansas.307,313 Borie, A. E 510, 511, 512 Botts, John M., of Va 227, 429 INDEX. 079 Bnckalew, Charles R 562 Buffaloes, their immense numbers 314 Bull Run, battle of cause of the Union defeat 397-98 Butler, Benjamin F 400, 460, 532, 563 Brisbane, Albert 148, 153 Children, Horace Greeley s love of 367 Broderick, Senator David C., of Califor- Cholera, in 1832 59 nia his life and death 309 in 1849 369 Brooks, Erastns 100, 107, 578, 666-7 Chronicle, The Washington 671 James 100,107,306 Cider, hard, the campaign 94 Brown, Albert G 216 Cilley-Graves, the duel 90 B. Gratz 295, 517, 542, 545, 546 Cincinnati, the Liberal Convention at.. 536 John 335-6, 455 and following pages; Mr. Greeley e Browne, Julius Henri 603, 605-7 visit 565-6, 653-5 Browning, O. H., of Illinois 343 Civita Vecchia, inhabited by officials, Brotherhood of all men 626-7, 632-3 priests, soldiers, and beggars 349 Bruce, George, the eminent type founder. 77 Clagett, Thomas W 365 Bryant, William Cullen.. 107, 305, 352, 517, 518 Clay, Cassius M 342, 538 Buchanan, James 306, 308, 392, 413 Clement, C 417-18 Miss Margaret 180 Henry. .72, 74, 83, 92, 100, 160, 162,163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 188, 195, 204, 228, 291, 352, 388, 422, 449, 455, 481, 488-89, 499, 515, 517 Cleveland, Mr. John F 488 Clichy, a debtors prison in Paris, hu morous description of 276-81 William O 200 Clifford, Nathan, Justice of the Supreme Court 437,438 CAIRO, Illinois 182 Clinton, DeWitt,his statesmanship 106 Calhoun, John C 72, 83, 224, 388 Cobb, Howell, of Georgia 227,308 California, emigration to 209 Cochrane, General John 414, 537, 665-6 Mr. Greeley visits 323-35 Coggeshall, James 113,114 admission in Union 618-21 Colfax, Schuyler 509, 578 Cameron, Simon, of Penn 339, 399, 400 Coliseum, the, at Rome 250-51 Campbell. L. D - 99. 301 Collamer, Jacob, ofVermont 225 Canby, Gen. R. H 419 Columbus, Christopher, his monument Carpenter, Senator Matthew H 532 atGenoa 248 "Carpet-baggers," the, denounced by Columbus (Ohio), The State Journal 100 Horace Greeley 519 Commercial, The Cincinnati... 452, 515, 672 and see 650-63 Commercial Advertiser, the of New- Cass, Lewis, candidate for President 200 York 79, 674 for nomination 306 Composition-room of The Tribune. ..470-75 Castelar, Emilio, theSpanish Statesman 628 Compromise, of 1850 - 167,292 Castle, Mr. M. B 266 compromises for slavery, evils of 388 Channel, the British, horrors of cross- Confiscation 642-44 ing 243, 256 Congdon, Charles T 187, 305, 463 Chapin, Rev. E. H 578,581-86 Congress, "a last night," 222-24 Chaplaincy, the Congressional 207 Chappaqua, Mr. Greeley s farm and farm labours there 373-81 reception there of Democratic com mittee 560-61 Charcoal -burning -27 Charleston. South Carolina, Democratic National Convention there in 1860 337 now and formerly 230 contest for Speaker in 1855 300-301 Conkling, Senator Roscoe 532, 563 Conscience, perverted 535 Conservative, description of one 431 Conway, Rev. M. D 128 Cooking, a valuable and easy accom plishment 1366-67 Chase, Salmon P.298, 339, 509, 542, 545, 564, 578 Coolbangh, William F 552 Chattanooga, campaign of 419 Coombes, Leslie 547 Chicago, the great fire 197/ "Coons," their abundance in 1844 164-65 the River and Harbour Convention 198 Co-operation 151, 237, 5(55, 650 National Convention of 1860 338-43 and following pages. of 1864 414 Cooper, J. Fenimore, an account of his of 1868 508-9 libel suits against The Tribune. 132 to 144 The Evening Journal 674 Copper, the Lake Superior mines 197-98 -Childs, Mrs. L. Maria 602-3 Copyright, international 181-82 680 INDEX. " Corners," Mr. Greeley s opinion of.. 654-5 Corporationism 504 Corwin, Thomas, his genius, eloquence, character 97-8 in the Senate, 234 at Chicago .343, 481 Cowles, Alfred 478 Cox, General J. D., of Ohio.... 510, 512, 546 Samuel, S 513-13 Crawford, William H., a candidate for President 73 Credit Mobilier 386, 561, 568-9 Creswell, John A. J 510 Crittenden, John J 83, 98 Croswell, Edwin 104 Crystal Palace, the, of London, 233 that of New-York - 374 Cnmmings. A. J., his articles on The Tribune establishment 448-76 Curtin, Andrew G 509, 542 Curtis, George William 183, 184 Dickens, as a comedian 237 mention of 460 Diligence, travelling by in Italy 353 an adventure in 353-54 Donelson, Andrew J 305 Doolittle, James K., president of the Baltimore Convention of 1872 552 speech 554-56 Douglas, Stephen A. 207, 224, 397, 299, 301, 306 debates with Lincoln 309-12 candidate for President 353, 354-55 mention of 571 Draining, Mr. Greeley s at Chappaqua 380-82 Drinking in New England fifty years ago universal 63-4 Dubois, Jesse 538 Duelling, Horace Greeley s opinion of it, in note 90 DALLAS, GEOBSEM 162 EAGLE, The Brooklyn 664 Dana, Charles A ...130, 131, 187, 399,464,499 Edinburgh, its many good houses 257 Darwin, Charles 185 Edmunds, Senator George F 532 Davis, Jefferson Education, popular, by schools, and the 407,416,426,427-38,492, 544, 663 public press 293-94 Henry Winter 414 universal 632-3 Judge David 453-3, 573-tt/ Emancipation, urged by The Tribune.. .403 Dawes, Henry L 665 Mr. Greeley s Prayer of Twenty Mil- Dayton, William L., a candidate for lions correspondence with President "Vice-President 307 the city of, Ohio 161 Death, causes of Mr. Greeley s were manifold 575-77 its influence 596 Defrees, John D. ... ... 509, 664 Lincoln 404-40? its immediate effect, 408 reference to 491, 610, 612, 640-41 Emerson , Ralph Waldo 169, 170, 185 Emmanuel, Victor, King of Sardinia 248,249 Delano, Columbus 512, 546 ^Enemies, often our practical friends 119 Democratic party when so first called.. .91 England, the people of Mr. Greeley s National Convention of 1844 161 of 1848 200 of 1862 286 its organization 299 convention of 1856 306 Of I860 337,353 of 1864 414 of 1868 509 of 1872 552-56 Democracy, of New Hampshire people. . _39/ Exaggeration, the American habit of .446-47 Denver, the city of, in 1859 314-17 Express, The New-York 100,189 Departure, the new, in politics, Horace Expresses, for news, account of them. .135 Greeley accepts 526-38-39 Dexter, Wirt, of Chicago 538 FARMING, its old-time drudgery 38 Dickens, Charles, early recognition of its capacity of improvement by edu- his genius by Horace Greeley 181 cation.. ...268 opinion 357-58 Enquirer, The Cincinnati 672 Erie, city of 53, 661-3, Europe, Mr. Greeley visits 231-59 revisits 268, 284 -N his volume, " Glances at Europe ".489-CO Evarts, William M 342, 393, 437, 578 Everett, Edward 353, 354 Ewing, Thomas... ...98-9 "American Notes" 182 his second visit to America; the din ner, Horace Greeley presiding 183-85 Mr. Greeley s farming at Turtle Bay... 373 at Chappaqua 373-86 the calling of a farmer 37B, 440, 441 INDEX. 081 his work upon farming 02-04 Farragut, Admiral David G 419 Female Journalists, mention of 180 Fenton, Keuben E 509,533,537,578 Fessenden, William P 298-99, 304 Field, Miss Kate 180,466 Fight, in Congress 223-24 Fillmore. Millard 99, 161, 200, 305 Fish, Hamilton 511 Fishing, Horace Greeley s only sport 29 Florence, Italy 252 Folding newspapers 477-78 Forney, John W 534, 587 Fort Doiielson, surrender of 419 Fourier, Charles 148, 149 France, a Republic 245-46, 270-71 passion for glory 273 ^franco-Prussian war Tribune reports.. 129 Franking privilege, the abuse abolished. 222 Free-Soil Democracy, national conven tion of, in 1852 286 Frelinghuysen, Theodore, candidate for Vice-President 161 Fremont, Gen. John C., a candidate for President 306 mention of 400, 414, 415 Friends and enemies, the value of each. 119 Fry, William H., associate editor of The Tribune 131, 450 /ugitive-slave, a case 49 * the last Fugitive-slave law 292 Fuller, Margaret 127, 170 Mr. Greeley s delineation of her gen ius, and account of her life 170-78 ler work on The Tribune 178-79 tier influence in respect of woman s r claims to high positions of influence. .180 mention of 185, 186, 197, 359, 578 H^nry M 301 Funeral of Horace Greeley 577-89 GALES, JOSEPH, Jr 106 Gallagher, William D 105 Garrison, William Lloyd 517, 596 Gazette, The Cincinnati 100, 105, 452 Generosity, Mr. Greeley s 601-2 Genoa, its magnificent churches 248 Germans, seen to best advantage at home; difference between them and the Swiss 256 Giddings, Joshua R 224,225,226,342 Glaciers, the 281-83 Gladstone, William, the English pre mier 127,613 Glasgow, more American than other European cities 257 Globe, The Washington, established 104 Gi)hham, Dr. Sylvester 82 fM.r. Greeley s "Grahamism" 157 Wm. A. Graham, of North Carolina.. 286 Granger, Francis, candidate for Vice- President in 1836 86 work in 1840 99 Grant, Gen. U. S., his campaign against Richmond 398, 418-19, 420 nominated for President 509 elected 510 his first cabinet 510-11 his administration assailed by emi nent Republicans 531-36 renomination 561 mention of.. 570, 571, 572, 573, 578, 595, 65(5, 661 Graves-Cilley, the duel 90 GREELEY, HORACE, birth 17 his birthplace 23 a sickly child 23 learns to read 23 first schoolmaster 24 first schoolhouse 25 spelling 25 an omnivorous reader 26 hard work 26 riding horse to plough 27 poverty 32 reading and working 34 toilet, when a boy 35 wants to be a printer 37 apprentice 38, 40 apt printer 41 ^overworked 43 /sedentary games 44 a debater 45 ill clad 47 ^aids his father 48 /first essays 49 /value of a trade . 50 farewell to Poultney 517 at work as a journeyman 52 "chopping" 52 at Erie, Pa 6S starts for New-York 53 the journey 54 arrival there and search for work 55-6 his first work 56-7 "anchored" 57 attends Tariff convention 57 working and talking 59 aids his father , i;o / his liberality 60 visits birthplace.. 60 /. a born reformer 62 f a temperance boy 61 his religious faith 66, 71 682 INDEX. GREELET, HORACE, GKEBLET, HORACE, a young politician. 71 journeys overland to California let- admiration of Henry Clay 74 ters, speeches, addresses 312-35 first business venture 76 services in the nomination and elec- The Morning Post 78 tion of Abraham Lincoln 337-56 establishes The New-Yorker 79 his home life, tastes, personal habits, not a poet... - 81 hospitality, family loves 357-71 marriage with Mary Y. Cheney 82 his farmer-life at Chappaqua 373-81 meets Thurlow Weed 89 his labours during the war of the re- edits The Jeffersonian 89,90,91 bellion 387, 420 services in the campaign of 1840.92 to 101 ^his utter condemnation of secession.. 392 establishes The New-York Tribune... Ill, his services for emancipation 404, 408 116 to 118 conduct during the riots of 1863... 410-11 his notice of Mr. Kaymond 122 peace negotiations of 1864 416-18 his libel suits with Fenimore Cooper attempts to conciliate President John- and others 132 to 145 son and Congress.. 424-25 /his socialism and other isms 146 to 159 bailing of Jefferson Davis 427-38 great labours in the campaign of 1844 o^treatment of new ideas 439-40 160-67 in his editorial room 452-55 defends the Transcendentalists 169 / his reform labours 482-S3 his noble tribute to Margaret Fuller.170-78 the various books of which he was au- presides at the Dickens dinner 183-85 thor 487, 506 his services to literature 186 candidate for Congress ..513 various discussions in The Tribune. 189-93 * opposes the "revenue reformers" 518 serenity in disaster 197 his Southern tour in 1871 519-29 dissatisfied with Gen l Taylor s nomi- a candidate for President of the United nation 200 States account of the canvass 530-73 Vauxhall Garden speech 201,202 his letter accepting the Cincinnati elected to Congress ...202 nomination 548-50 his services in Congress 205-30 nominated at Baltimore by the De- visits Europe 231 mocracy 556 a juror at the World s Fair 234 his address and letter of acceptance speech at banquet 235-36 557-60 speech at Anti-slavery society ...236 his tours of New England and the examined on journalism in America West 564-71 and the British taxes on knowledge by last illness, death, funeral 574-89 a parliamentary committee 239-42 review of his life 593, 614 at Paris 244 /testimonials to his genius and worth opinion of the French Republic... 245-46 by public bodies and the public press journey through France, Italy, Switz- 665-77 erland, Germany, and Belgium 247-58 GREELET, MRS. HORACE 82, 269, 275, 282 homeward bound 259 358, 366-67, 373-74, 571, 601 on the platform as alecturer, letters. 260-67 GREELET, ARTHUR YOUNG (" Pickie "), revisits Europe 269^ Mr. Greeley s account of his death. 368-69 in aFrench Prison 273-81 GREELET, MART WOODBURN, mother of visits Switzerland, among the Alps. 281 -83 Horace 18 returns by Paris and London to Amer- her character 19 ica 284 her death 20 his independent course in campaign GREELET, ZACCHEUS, father of Horace. ..17 of 1852 285-89 his grandfather, Zaccheus Greeley 19 departs on the Free-Soil departure; bankruptcy of the father 28 connexion with the new party move- his liberality 30 ments 290, 300 downfall 31 in the contest for Speaker in 1855-6 popular household 36 300, 303 pays debts 48 assailed by Rust of Arkansas 302 and mentioned passim. work in the Fremont campaign... 307, 308 Green, Duff. 104 in the Lincoln-Douglas contest 309-12 "Green" men 370-71 INDEX. 683 Grosvenor, Colonel William M... 517, 538-39 Indianapolis, Mr. Greeley s speech.. 566-70 The Sentinel newspaper 673 HALE. JOHN P., of New Hampshire 287 Indiana, how to civilize them 315 David 56 Ingalls, J. J., Senator from Kansas 133 Halleck, General H. W 419 in note. Halstead, Murat 183 Intelligencer, The National, at Wash- Hamlin. Hannibal 304 ington 105 candidate for Vice-President 352, 354 Inter-Ocean, The Chicago 674 Hammond. Charles, of The Cincinnati Ireland, Horace Greeley s sympathy with 104 Gazette _ 105 visited by him 257 Hanna, Bayless W 552 Iron, in buildings 233 Harlan, Senator James 532 Irrigation, in Lombardy 255 Harris, Ira, defeats Mr. Greeley for the at Mr. Greeley s farm 383-84 United States Senate .393-94 Irving, Washington, his touching "break- Harrisburgh, the Whig National Con- down" at the Dickens dinner 182 vention at 92 "Isms" of The Tribune 439 I Harrison. William Henry, candidate for President in 1836 86 JACKSON, ANDREW 72 in 1840 92 elected President 74,75 et seq. re-elected, his character ....85-6 his character .. 93 criticises Ritchie 104 his death 101, 290, 291 as an editor 104, 291 Hawley, Gen. Joseph E 183,184 mention of 353 Hendricks, Thomas A.. 562, 566, 571 Jefferson, Thomas 49 Herald, The New- York.. ..108, 109, 110, 126, Jeffersonian, The, newspaper 89-90, 609 307, 449, 484, 485592-3 "Jenkins" 129-30 Hickman, John ^ 537 Jcrrold, Douglas, representing "Mr. Hill, Isaac, of The New Hampshire Pa- Softhead 237 triot 103-4 Johnson, Andrew... 227, 423, 424-25,507,639 Hoar, E. R., of Massachusetts 511-12 Herschel, V 353 Hoffman, Governor of New York.. .552, 578 Richard, M.. 86, 92 Holcombe, James P 417, 418 Journalism, American, a history there- J Home, Mr. Greeley s home adornments. 370 of needed l(w his home in the Chappaqua woods.377-78 Mr. Frederic Hudson s work, in note. .103 ^feomestead, the policy, first introduced constant labour of the journalist 357 i in Congress by Horace Greeley... 206, 207 female journalists 180 208, 209, 222, 289, 610 vitality of independent journalism. 485-86 Hospitality, its nature 366 its excessive work 505 Mr. Greeley s 367 value to the people ...612-13 Howard, Tilman A 99 Julian, George W., of Indiana, candi- HoweK. J. B 365 date for Vice-President 287 Howitt, William and Mary 238 at Cincinnati, in 1872 538 Hubbard, Mrs. Sara M - 180 J and see 602 Hudson, Frederic, author of "History of Journalism" 78 KANSAS 306, 307, 308, 313 Hughes. Thomas. author of "Tom Brown Kansas-Nebraska bill, the 269, 297, 308 at Oxford" 127-28 Kasson, John A., of Iowa 352 "Humbug" and error must be exam- Kellogg, Miss Clara Louise 578,579,675 ined 159 Kendall Amos 104. 105 Hunt, Washington 219,228 King, William R., of Alabama, candi- Hutchins, Waldo 537 date for Vice-President 286 Huxley. Thomas Henry 185 Preston 305 Kings, their all-devouring pomp 24j / IMMIGRATION to America 641 Know-nothingism Impeachment of President Johnson.... 425 125, 269, 297, 298, 299-300, 304, 344, 348 Imprisonment for debt 279, 281 Koerner, Gustavus 538 Inauguration Ball, in 1849 228-29 Ku-Eux, Mr. Greeley s opinion of them 524, 649, 6 684 I LABOUB, worth of 235 London, its imperial growth 238 necessity of its elevation 260 its deepening impressions 283 the reform of 285, 289, 334, 386, 444, 445, Londonderry, New Hampshire... 21 503-04, 610, 628-30, 651-3 and reference to, passim /Land-speculators, their bad influence... 313 Louisville, The Journal 100 Lane, Henry S 99, 305, 306, 307 the "Bourbon" convention of 1872 563 anecdote 341 Courier-Journal 671 mention of 343, 509 Lowry, Morrow B 537-38 Joseph, of Oregon 353,355 Lyon, Caleb, of Lyonsdale interview Lawrence, Cornelius W 81 witL Mr. Greeley 572 Lawn, want of, in too many instances. .379 Lyons, city of 247 Lecompton, Constitution, the, of Kan sas history 308 MAGNANIMITY, in triumph 433-33, 649-64 Lecturing, used by Horace Greeley to "Maine, Law," the 296-7 ^ interest the public in behalf of labour. 260 Manchester, New Hampshire. 23,645 his first essay in this behalf.. 2fil-62 Mann, Horace 226-27 his improvement in public speaking Marble, Manton, of The New-York 263-64 World 517, 578 publications of a volume of lectures. 264-65 Marriage, want of respect of, in Paris.. .245 Legare, Hugh 99 Marshall, Humphrey 301, 433 Leslie, Frank 537 Joseph 99 Levin, LouisC 99 Samuel, S 552 Libel-suits 132 to 145 Martyrdom, poor use for men 520 Liberal Reform party, its first national Mason, John Y 275 convention, address and platform.. 530-45 Matthews, Stanley 538, 539 <Jk Liberty, impartial and universal. 648 Maverick, Augustus 183,191 I Life, human, capable of goodness and M CIure, Alexander K 537 greatness 262 M Cormick, C. H., his reaper in London.233 Lincoln, Abraham, in Congress 216 himself at Baltimore Covention in described by Mr. Greeley 225 1872 552 a Republican 305 McDowell, Gen. Irwin 397-98 in the Philadelphia convention of 1856.307 McElrath, Thomas.. 114, 115, 116, 183, 444, 479 debates with Douglas 309-12 McLean, John, Judge of the U.S. Su- in the Chicago convention 339-43 preme Court 306 his election made a pretext for war McClellan, General George B.412, 414-15, 419 387,389 McClernand, John A 552 becomes President 392 Medill, Joseph, of Chicago 339 annoyed by Cameron 399 Men of the world, never "green" 371 sustains Stanton ...402 Mexican, the War 188, 192 his caution 404 Mileage, Congressional, Mr. Greeley s letter to Horace Greeley on emanci- famous expose, and debates in Con- pation 406 greSs thereon 210-19 his administration 412-1^ " Millerites "fairly treated by The his death Mr. Greeley s estimate of ^ Tribune 158 his character 420-23 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 190 mention of Missouri, the Question of 1819-20 .. 71-2,297 427, 434, 449, 455, 491, 545, 571, 612, 640 Monroe, President James, his adminis- Lind, Mademoiselle Jenny, attends tration 72 "spiritual kuockings" 158 Moraines, the, of the Alps 282 Literature, greatly aided by The Tri- Mormonism, explained by Brigham bune, 168,613 Young 317-31 as a vocation 500-1 by Horace Greeley 323 Logan, Mrs. Celia, 180 Morris, George P 168 her sister Olive 180,466 Mr. S.V 267,268 General John A 509, 533, 562-3 Thomas, abolition candidate forVice- . "Log-cabin," the campaign 94 President 162 , Horace Greeley s newspaper.94, 95, 124, 609 Morton, Oliver P 305,532,562,563,566 INDEX. 685 NAPOLEON, the Great 270 his tomb 272-73 the Third 256,270 Nast, Thomas, the prostitution of his genius 547 Nation, the (newspaper) 515, 517 Nebraska-Kansas, bill, see Kansas-Ne braska New England, tour of, by Mr. Greeley in 1872 564-5, 645-50 New Hampshire, Mr. Greeley s speeches in 645-18 Newsboys 108 Newspapers, the six-penny dailies of New-York 107 newspaper government autocratic. 129-30 comparative circulation of, in Lon don and New- York 241 &nA.passim New- York city in 1831 54 . in 1832 59 becomes the centre of intelligence 106 riots of 1863 408-11 passim New-Yorker, The, Horace Greeley s first journal 79 "prospectus " - 80 its character 80-81 discontinued 83-4 Noah, M. M 107 Nordhoff, Charles 183 Norton, Jesse 538 Parker, Theodore 426 Parks, for cities 238 the Central, of New-York 239 PAKTON JAMBS 18, 38, 41, 46, 51 note. .95, 153, 183, 359, 370, 371, 476, 477, 597 " Party organs " 103 to 107 Paxton, Joseph 233, 234, 235, 236 Peace, negotiations for, in 1864 416-18 Peter s, St., cathedral 250 Pettit, John, of Indiana. 211 Philadelphia, Whig National Conven tion of 1848 200 Republican Convention of 1856 306-7 of 1872 561 Philippe, Louis, King of France 373 Piatt, Donn 274, 279,280,540 Pierce, Franklin 286, 306 Pioneers, their work 651 Pisa, the Leaning Tower of. 249 Platform, Horace Greeley s of 1852, 287 Chicago of I860,.. 352 Cincinnati of 1872, 540 Poe, Edgar A 169,460 Political Parties situation of in 1824 72 n!837 87 in 1840 91-2 in 1844 160-67 in 1848 200,203 in 1852 285-89 after the dismemberment of the Whig Po I, [party 290 OBITUARIES, Tribune bureau of 464-65 ^ the days of small issues 291, 293-04 of Horace Greeley 665-77 ; situation in 1854 297, 300 Ocean travel 232, 270 in 1856 305, 308 O Connor, Charles 563 in 1860 337-5(5 O Donnell, Mr. Kane, his Tribune let- in 1864 414-16. ters from Mexico 128 in 1868 508-10 f Office-seekers Mr. Greeley s opinion in the South in 1871 519-22 of them 649 at large in 1872 530-36 One Presidential Term 288 ^Politicians, the people generally 71 "On to Richmond!" origin of the ex- Polk, James K., President.. 161, 165, 166, 188, pression 394-99 195, 203 Oratory, that of the British House of Commons, and the American House of Representatives compared 284 "Organs." See "Party Organs." Orton, William 184, 578 Owen, Robert 148, 149, 237 Robert Dale... 502 Porter, William T 58 Post, The Boston 670 The Morning, Mr. Greeley s first pa per 78 The Chicago Evening 180 The New-York Evening 515, 593-4 Postage, cheap 222 Poultney, East Vt 37, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 74 PACIFICATION, national 637-44, 649-50 Powersi Hiram, the sculptor 252 Pacific Railroad, the 333,335, 567-S Prentice, George D., in 1840 100 Packard, Mr. S. S 448 his work and genius 163-64,485 Palmer, John M., of Illinois 509 Prentiss, S. S 99 ** Paris, its social life, a paradise of the Presidential campaigns that of 1824. .72-3 senses 244 of 1828 74 Its "Royal Palaces" 246 of 1832 - 85 its sensual life 284 of 1836 ,...86 686 INDEX. Presidential Campaigns. (that of 1840 91,101 that of 1844 160-67 that of 1848. 300,202 that of 1852, a fraud 285-89 that of 1856 305,308 that of 1860 337-56 that of 1864 413-16 of 1868 508-19 of 1872 530-73 J Press, public, as an educator of the peo ple 293-94 Printers, dedication. 470-76, 628-30 Prison-life in Paris, Horace Greeley s experience 274-81 Proctor, Edna Dean 676-7 Profanity, Mr. Greeley s habit of 365 Proof-reading 467-69 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 442-43 Proscription, ills of 520-22 J "Protection "..247, 289, 291, 481, 496-97, 498, 515, 517, 545 Providence, (R.I.) the Press 671 Puritans, a jovial people 21, 32 RAGGED-SCHOOLS, of London 152, 237-38 Randolph, Thomas Jefferson 552, 554 Ray, Dr. Charles H 305, 339, 340, 575 Raymond, Henry J..120 to 124, 126, 153, 157, 183, 184, 189, 340, 343, 344-52, 633 Rawlins, Gen. John A 511 Rebellion, the war of 387 to 420 Horace Greeley s history of 490-96 fought over in 1868 508 nature of 523-24 feecollect ons of a Busy Life, Horace Greeley e autobiography 499,502 Reconstruction of the Union Mr. Gree ley s views 425-26, 507 Richmond speech 637-44 Recruiting, in the army speech by Horace Greeley 617-18 Redfleld, J. S 60 I Reform, ever meets with obstacles 262 | " Hints Towards " 489-90 Reid, Whitelaw ....183, 462, 537 i Religion, Horace Greeley s own account I of his personal faith 66 to 71 that of The Tribune heterodox 158 Republican, the Party 125,300,301 its formation 304, first national convention .. 306, that of 1860, and the canvass 337-56 national convention of 1864 413 of 1868 508-10 of 1872 i 561-62 its ideas... 644 Republican, The Springfield 515, 670-71 The St. Louis 515, 536,674 Revenue reform 514, 530-31 Richardson, Wm. A 300,301 Riots, of New- York in 1863 407-11, 491 Ripley, George. 130, 170, 185, 186, 187, 450, 464 Ritchie, Thomas 104 Rives, John C 104 Robeson, George H 512 Robinson, Solon 130 Rocky Mountains 315,490 Rome 249-50, 251-52 Rooker Thomas N 469-70,479 Root, Erastus 99 Joseph M., of Ohio .216-17, 226 Rowett, Gen. Richard 538 Rust, Albert.. 302,303 SACRAMENTO, California 323-28 St. Simon 148, 149 Sand, George 185 Sanders, George N 417 Sandwich, 111., town of. 266 San Francisco, California 333-34, 620-21 Sawyer, Mr. "Sausage," of Ohio.. 210,211,215 Schell, Augustus 607 Schenck, Robert C..99, 161, 212, 217,226, 301 Schurz, Carl 342, 517, 531-32, 539, 540, 546, 547, 578 Scott, Gen. Winfield 286, 397-98 Seaton, William W 105 Secession, arguments in behalf of 388-89 I reply to Mr. Thurlow Weed s state- 1 ment that Mr. Greeley was in favour of secession ..390-93 reference to 653-4, 656 Selden, Henry R 537 Senate, the U. S 308,531-34 Seward, William H..91, 99, 144, 190,298, 304, 339-43, 344-52 Seymour, Horatio 409, 509-10 Sheahan, James W., biographer of Ste phen A. Douglas 311 Shellabarger, Samuel 513 Shepard, Dr. H. D., founder of penny papers 77-8 Sherman, General William T..418, 420, 511, 598, 656 Sinclair, Samuel 183, 478, 479, 577. 578 Slavery .71, 72, 188, 236, 279, 288, 297, 298, 305, 307, 355, 387, 388, 389, 404, 494, 521-22, 618-20, 638-44, 645, 65P referred to, passim. Smalley, G. W 128 Smith, Caleb B 220,343 Gerrit 424, 429, 562 INDEX. 687 Socialism, the tendency of generous Texas, the Question, and Mr. Clay s / minds 146 ^attitude thereon 166 Mr. Greeley s views of the systems of Mr. Greeley visits the State 519-28 C)wen,St. Simon, and Fourier 149 Thomas, General George H 419-20 fiiis own system 149-50-51 Thompson, Richard W 223, 227 T;he germ of reform .152 Jacob 417 discussion with Henry J. Raymond on Thurman, Senator A. G 533-34 the subject 153-57, 633-5,636 Tilton, Theodore 537 Songs, Political, of 1840, 95 to 97 Times, The Chicago 550, 669-70 of 1844 161 The London 233, 236, 240, 486 " Sore-head," what it means 205 ,The New-York. 124, 157, 183, 449, 590 South, the, a tour of, by Mr. Greeley. 519-29 " Tippecanoe," the campaign 93 to 101 his nomination kindly received 547 Tobacco Mr. Greeley s detestation of it reference to passim 65-6, 630-31 Spaulding, R. P., of Ohio 424,528 Toilet, Horace Greeley s 363-64 Speaking, the public, of Englishmen Toombs, Robert, of Georgia 227 and Americans 284 Tousey, Sinclair 537, 578, 594-5 Spectator, the Northern, of East Poult- Townsend, George Alfred 545 ney, Vt., Horace Greeley s office of / Transcendentalists, the, favourably re- apprenticeship 43 ceived by The Tribune 169 Spenser, Herbert 185 Treason, American law of 437-38 Spirit of The Times newspaper ...58 Tree-planting, in Lombardy 255 Spiritualism 157, 363 tree-cutting, and planting 375-76-77 Sprague, Senator William 564 Tribune, TheChicago * "Squatter Sovereignty" 297 339, 340, 478, 486, 515, 543, 611, 672-3 Stanton,Edwin M 131,400, 401, 402, 475 Tribune, The New- York, established by / State sovereignty 387 Horace Greeley 110, 113 f| Statistics, Mr. Greeley s knowledge historical sketch 116-18 | thereof 487 early success 119-20 Stephens, Alexander H 227, 301, 416 The Weekly Tribune established 124 Sterrett, Joseph M 53, 661 its foreign correspondence 128-30 Stevens, Mr. E. L 364 managing and other editors 130-32 Thaddeus 642-43 account of its libel suits 132 Stewart, A. T., of New- York 510, 511 fcvelcomes every struggling reform and Story, Francis V 76-77, 79 /thought 185, 187, 188 Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher 293, 304, 389 burning of the office 195-97 Successful persons 189 its course during the early part of the Suffrage, impartial 610,611 war, with the famous article "Just Sumner, Charles 298, 460, 531, 572 Once" 394-99 Sun, The New-York 108 assailed by a mob 410 Switzerland, cannot afford to be a king- on President Johnson s impeachment. 425 dom 255 an account of the Tribune establish ment, editorial, mechanical, finan- TALFOURD, THOMAS N 237 cial 439-36 Tappan, Mason W 564 thirty yearsold 480-81 Tariffs 166, 200, 219, 287, 514, 516, 517 ^its services in reforms 482-83 and passim ^S&ver advocates Protection 497 Taylor, Bayard, 127, 131, 187, 675-6 ^sfia influence and power 611 Hawkins 363 and mentioned passim General Zachary 195 Trumbull, Lyman candidate for President 200, 203-4 305, 478, 532-33, 542, 543, 545, 573, 576, 578 mention of 205, 206. 228, 621 Tuck, Amos 216 Taxation, jnst and unjust 515-16-17 Turin, Italy 248 of newspapers 239-42 Turner, Thomas J., of Illinois Telegraph, more used by American than 212, 213, 214, 215, 217 European journals 242, 664 Tyler, Johiu 86, 92, 99, 160, 203, 290, 621 temperance, the reform Type, how measured 472 63, 64. 65, 267, 268-69, 289, 296, 610, 631-32 688 INDEX. " UNCLE Tom s Cabin," a novel by Mrs. Stowe 293,297,389 Universal Salvation, Mr. Greeley s be lief in 66-71 Universal Peace Congress of 1851 256 VAXLANDIGHAM, C. L 535 Van Buren, Martin 86, 87, 91, 92, 160, 161, 164, 200, 291 Whig Convention. at Baltimore, in 1844 160 Philadelphia, in 1848 200 its last campaign 285-89 exit 296,306 the almanac 488 and see 669 White, Horace 538, 540 HughL 86 Vanderbilt, Cornelius 429 Whittier, John G 675 Vatican, the, at Rome 251 Wilkes, George 58 Venice, "Queen of the Adriatic" 254-55 Williams, George H 512 Verplanck, Gnlian C 81 Willis, N. P 158, 168, 368 Vicksburgh, campaign of 419 Victoria, Queen of England 232, 233 Virginia, its commercial advantages 644 Vituperation, political .291 Mr. Greeley s habit of 365-66, 446-47 Voorhees, Daniel W 550, 552, 566-7, 571 Wilrnot, David 342 Wilson, Henry 286,509,532, 578 General James H 420 John ("Kit North") 168 Winthrop, Robert C 211, 225 Wirt, William, a candidate for President.74 Woodburn, David, Horace Greeley s first schoolmaster 24 John, his great-grandfather 21 WADE, BENJAMIN F 298, 414, 428-29, 509 War of the rebelllion 287, 420 and passim Warren, Fitz Henry, 131, 394-95, 399, 538 Woman s Rights, speech on, by Horace Washburne, Elihu B 280,510, 511, 587 J Greeley 329-30 Watterson, Henry 485, 544-45,566 mention of 443-44, 572 Webb, Col. James Watson Women, the, of England 258 90, 107, 190-91, 340, 341, 343 Work, the criterion of age 576 Webster, Daniel 83, 105, 126, 224, 362, 426, 481, 494-95 Weed,Thnrlow 87-88, 89, 92, 100, 133, 144, 838-43, 344-52, 357, 390-93, 487, 578, 590-91 World s, Fair, of 1851 231, 232 of 1855 271-72 World, The New- York 449, 452, 550, 590-92, 668-9 Wellington, the Duke of. 234 Wright, Joseph A., of Indiana 267 Wells, David A 517, 518, 537 Silas, of New York 161 Wentworth, John 219, 221, 227, 305, 538 Westhaven, Vt 32,36,41 YOUNO, BJHOHAM, Mr. Greeley s inter- West, the, Mr. Greeley visits 197 view with, In 1859 317-21 tour of, in 1872 565-71, 650-64 Whig, the Party convention at Harris- burgh, in 1839 92 John Russell 183, 425, 450, 458-60 Yosemite, the, Horace Greeley s de scription 830-3 THE END. 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