"After the joy of Lincoln's nomination had subsided," wrote Leonard Swett of Chicago, "Judge Davis and I called upon Mr. Weed. This was the first time either of us had met him. He did not talk angrily as to the result, nor did he complain of any one. Confessing with much feeling to the great disappointment of his life, he said, 'I hoped to make my friend, Mr. Seward, President, and I thought I could serve my country in so doing.' He was a larger man intellectually than I anticipated, and of finer fibre. There was in him an element of gentleness and a large humanity which won me, and I was pleased no less than surprised."—Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 292.
[288] New York Tribune, May 22, 1860.
[289] New York Times, May 25, 1860.
[290] "At Chicago, Seward encountered the opposition from his own State of such powerful leaders as Greeley, Dudley Field, Bryant, and Wadsworth. The first two were on the ground and very busy. The two latter sent pungent letters that were circulated among the delegates from the various States. The main point of the attack was that Seward could not carry New York. Soon after the adjournment of the convention, William Curtis Noyes, a delegate, told me that a careful canvass of the New York delegation showed that nearly one-fourth of its members believed it was extremely doubtful if Seward could obtain a majority at the polls in that State."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, pp. 214-15. "Perhaps the main stumbling block over which he fell in the convention was Thurlow Weed."—Ibid., p. 215.
[291] New York Tribune, June 2, 1860.
[292] New York Tribune, June 14, 1860.
[293] F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. 2, p. 239.
[294] Ibid., p. 240.
[295] "My personal relations with Governor Seward were wholly unchanged by this letter. We met frequently and cordially after it was written, and we very freely conferred and co-operated during the long struggle in Congress for Kansas and Free Labour. He understood as well as I did that my position with regard to him, though more independent than it had been, was nowise hostile, and that I was as ready to support his advancement as that of any other statesman, whenever my judgment should tell me that the public good required it. I was not his adversary, but my own and my country's freeman."—Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 321.
[296] H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, pp. 199, 200.