This was also the argument of Buchanan. In his letter of acceptance he sounded the keynote of his party, claiming that it was strictly national, devoted to the Constitution and the Union, and that the Republican party, ignoring the historic warning of Washington, was formed on geographic lines.[209] All this made little impression upon the host of Northern men who exulted in the union of all the anti-slavery elements. But their intense devotion to the positive utterances of their platform took away the sense of humour which often relieves the tension of political activity, and substituted an element of profound seriousness that was plainly visible in speakers and audiences. Seward did not hasten into the campaign. Richard H. Dana wrote, confidentially, that "Seward was awful grouty." It was October 2 when he began speaking. Congress had detained him until August 30, and then his health was so impaired, it was explained, that he needed rest. But other lovers of freedom were deeply stirred. The pulpit became a platform, and the great editors spoke as well as wrote. Henry Ward Beecher seemed ubiquitous; Greeley and Raymond made extended tours through the State; Bryant was encouraged to overcome his great timidity before an audience; and Washington Irving declared his intention of voting, if not of speaking, for Fremont.
This campaign also welcomed into political life a young man whose first speech made it plain that a new champion, with bright and well-tempered sword, had taken up the cause of freedom with the courage of the cavalier. George William Curtis was then thirty-two years old. He had already written the Howadji books, which earned him recognition among men of letters, and Prue and I, which had secured his fame as an author. In the campaign of 1856, the people for the first time saw and knew this man whose refined rhetoric, characterised by tender and stirring appeal, and guided by principle and conviction, was, thereafter, for nearly forty years, to be heard at its best on one side of every important question that divided American political life. Nathaniel P. Willis, who drove five miles in the evening to hear him deliver a "stump speech," thought Curtis would be "too handsome and too well dressed" for a political orator; but when he heard him unfold his logical argument step by step, occasionally bursting into a strain of inspiring eloquence that foreshadowed the more studied work of his riper years, it taught him that the author was as caustic and unconstrained on the platform as he appeared in The Potiphar Papers.
Curtis' theme was resistance to the extension of slavery. His wife's father, Francis G. Shaw, had stimulated his zeal in the cause of freedom; and he treated the subject with a finish and strength that came from larger experience and longer observation than a young man of thirty-two could usually boast. To him, the struggle for freedom in Kansas was not less glorious than the heroic resistance in 1776, and he made it vivid by the use of historic associations. "Through these very streets," he said, "they marched who never returned. They fell and were buried, but they can never die. Not sweeter are the flowers that make your valley fair, not greener are the pines that give your valley its name, than the memory of the brave men who died for freedom. And yet no victim of those days, sleeping under the green sod, is more truly a martyr of Liberty than every murdered man whose bones lie bleaching in this summer sun upon the silent plains of Kansas. And so long as Liberty has one martyr, so long as one drop of blood is poured out for her, so long from that single drop of bloody sweat of the agony of humanity shall spring hosts as countless as the forest leaves and mighty as the sea."[210]
Curtis thought the question of endangering the Union a mere pretence. "Twenty millions of a moral people, politically dedicated to Liberty, are asking themselves whether their government shall be administered solely in the interest of three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders." He did not believe that these millions would dissolve the Union in the interest of these thousands. "I see a rising enthusiasm," he said, in closing; "but enthusiasm is not an election; and I hear cheers from the heart, but cheers are not voters. Every man must labour with his neighbour—in the street, at the plough, at the bench, early and late, at home and abroad. Generally we are concerned in elections with the measures of government. This time it is with the essential principle of government itself."[211]
The result of the election was not a surprise. Fremont's loss of Pennsylvania and Indiana had been foreshadowed in October, making his defeat inevitable, but the Republican victory in New York was more sweeping than the leaders had anticipated, Fremont securing a majority of 80,000 over Buchanan, and John A. King 65,000 over Amasa J. Parker.[212] The average vote was as follows: Republican, 266,328; Democrat, 197,172; Know-Nothing, 129,750. West and north of Albany, every congressman and nearly every assemblyman was a Republican. Reuben E. Fenton, who had been beaten for Congress in 1854 by 1676 votes, was now elected by 8000 over the same opponent. The Assembly stood 82 Republicans, 37 Democrats, and 8 Know-Nothings. In the country at large, Buchanan obtained 174 electoral votes out of 296, but he failed to receive a majority of the popular vote, leaving the vanquished more hopeful and not less cheerful than the victors. Fillmore received the electoral vote of Maryland and a popular vote of 874,534, nearly one-half as many as Buchanan and two-thirds as many as Fremont. In other words, he had divided the vote of the North, making it possible for Buchanan to carry Pennsylvania and Indiana.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT
1857-1858
It was the duty of the Legislature of 1857 to elect a successor to Hamilton Fish, whose term as United States senator expired on the 4th of March. Fish had not been a conspicuous member of the Senate; but his great wisdom brought him large influence at a time when slavery strained the courtesy of that body. He was of a most gracious and sweet nature, and, although he never flinched from uttering or maintaining his opinions, he was a lover and maker of peace. In his Autobiography of Seventy Years, Senator Hoar speaks of him as the only man of high character and great ability among the leaders of the Republican party, except President Grant, who retained the friendship of Roscoe Conkling.
The contest over the senatorship brought into notice a disposition among Republicans of Democratic antecedents not to act in perfect accord with Thurlow Weed, a danger that leading Whigs had anticipated at the formation of the party. Weed's management had been disliked by anti-slavery Democrats as much as it had been distrusted by a portion of the Whig party, and, although political associations now brought them under one roof, they did not accept him as a guiding or controlling spirit. This disposition manifested itself at the state convention in the preceding September; and to allay any bitterness of feeling which the nomination of John A. King might occasion, it was provided that, in the event of success, the senator should be of Democratic antecedents. The finger of fate then pointed to Preston King. He had resisted the aggressions of the slave power, and in the formation of the Republican party his fearless fidelity to its corner-stone principle made him doubly welcome in council; but when the Legislature met, other aspirants appeared, prominent among whom were Ward Hunt, James S. Wadsworth, and David Dudley Field.