"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 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; 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 name 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, I have made it, though it be conceited in me to say so. Even Weed has not been (I speak of his paper) hearty in this contest, while the journal of the Whig lieutenant-governor has taken care of its own interests 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 thousand subscribers in this city and its suburbs, and of these twenty thousand, I venture to say more voted for Ullman and Scroggs than for Clark and Raymond; the Tribune (also because of its character) has but eight thousand subscribers within the same radius, and I venture to say that of its habitual readers, nine-tenths voted for Clark and Raymond—very few for Ullman and Scroggs. I had to bear the brunt of the contest....
"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 should 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 than to glide out of the newspaper world as quietly and as speedily as possible, join my family in Europe, and, if possible, stay there quite a time—long enough to cool my fevered brain and renovate my over-tasked 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 profession; let me close with the assurance that these will ever be gratefully remembered by Yours, Horace Greeley."[292]
At the time Seward received this letter he regarded it as only a passing cloud-shadow. "To-day I have a long letter from Greeley, full of sharp, pricking thorns," he wrote Weed. "I judge, as we might indeed well know from his nobleness of disposition, that he has no idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see him so unhappy. Will there be a vacancy in the Board of Regents this winter? Could one be made at the close of the session? Could he have it? Raymond's nomination and election is hard for him to bear."[293] Two or three weeks later, after a call at the Tribune office, Seward again wrote Weed, suggesting that "Greeley's despondency is overwhelming, and seems to be aggravated by the loss of subscribers. But below this is chagrin at the failure to obtain official position."[294] With such inquiries and comments Seward put the famous letter away.[295]
Its publication did not accomplish all that Raymond expected. People were amazed, and deep in their hearts many persons felt that Greeley had been treated unfairly. The inquiry as to a vacancy in the Board of Regents showed that Seward himself shared this opinion at the time. But the question that most interested the public in 1860 was, why, if Greeley had declared war upon Seward in 1854, did not Weed make it known in time to destroy the influence of the man who had "deliberately wreaked the long-hoarded revenge of a disappointed office-seeker?" This question reflected upon Weed's management of Seward's campaign, and to avoid the criticism he claimed to have been "in blissful ignorance of its contents." This seems almost impossible. But in explaining the groundlessness of Greeley's complaints, Weed wrote an editorial, the dignity and patriotism of which contrasted favourably with Greeley's self-seeking.
"There are some things in this letter," wrote the editor of the Evening Journal, "requiring explanation—all things in it, indeed, are susceptible of explanations consistent with Governor Seward's full appreciation of Mr. Greeley's friendship and services. The letter was evidently written under a morbid state of feeling, and it is less a matter of surprise that such a letter was thus written, than that its writer should not only cherish the ill-will that prompted it for six years, but allow it to influence his action upon a question which concerns his party and his country.
"Mr. Greeley's first complaint is that this journal, in an 'editorial rescript formally read him out of the Whig party.' Now, here is the 'editorial rescript formally reading' Mr. Greeley out of the Whig party, taken from the Evening Journal of September 6, 1853:
"'The Tribune defines its position in reference to the approaching election. Regarding the "Maine law" as a question of paramount importance, it will support members of the legislature friendly to its passage, irrespective of party. For state officers it will support such men as it deems competent and trustworthy, irrespective also of party, and without regard to the "Maine law." In a word, it avows itself, for the present, if not forever, an independent journal (it was pretty much so always), discarding party usages, mandates, and platforms.