The Quadrilateral had been knocked into a cocked hat. Whitelaw Reid was the only one of us who clearly understood the situation and thoroughly knew what he was about. He came to me and said: “I have won, and you people have lost. I shall expect that you stand by the agreement and meet me as my guests at dinner to-night. But if you do not personally look after this the others will not be there.”
I was as badly hurt as any, but a bond is a bond and I did as he desired, succeeding partly by coaxing and partly by insisting, though it was devious work.
Frostier conviviality I have never sat down to than Reid’s dinner. Horace White looked more than ever like an iceberg, Sam Bowles was diplomatic but ineffusive, Schurz was as a death’s head at the board; Halstead and I through sheer bravado tried to enliven the feast. But they would none of us, nor it, and we separated early and sadly, reformers hoist by their own petard.
VI
The reception by the country of the nomination of Horace Greeley was as inexplicable to the politicians as the nomination itself had been unexpected by the Quadrilateral. The people rose to it. The sentimental, the fantastic and the paradoxical in human nature had to do with this. At the South an ebullition of pleased surprise grew into positive enthusiasm. Peace was the need if not the longing of the Southern heart, and Greeley’s had been the first hand stretched out to the South from the enemy’s camp—very bravely, too, for he had signed the bail bond of Jefferson Davis—and quick upon the news flashed the response from generous men eager for the chance to pay something upon a recognized debt of gratitude.
Except for this spontaneous uprising, which continued unabated in July, the Democratic Party could not have been induced at Baltimore to ratify the proceedings at Cincinnati and formally to make Greeley its candidate. The leaders dared not resist it. Some of them halted, a few held out, but by midsummer the great body of them came to the front to head the procession.
He was a queer old man; a very medley of contradictions; shrewd and simple; credulous and penetrating; a master penman of the school of Swift and Cobbett; even in his odd picturesque personality whimsically attractive; a man to be reckoned with where he chose to put his powers forth, as Seward learned to his cost.
What he would have done with the Presidency had he reached it is not easy to say or surmise. He was altogether unsuited for official life, for which nevertheless he had a passion. But he was not so readily deceived in men or misled in measures as he seemed and as most people thought him.
His convictions were emotional, his philosophy was experimental; but there was a certain method in their application to public affairs. He gave bountifully of his affection and his confidence to the few who enjoyed his familiar friendship—accessible and sympathetic though not indiscriminating to those who appealed to his impressionable sensibilities and sought his help. He had been a good party man and was by nature and temperament a partisan.
To him place was not a badge of servitude; it was a decoration—preferment, promotion, popular recognition. He had always yearned for office as the legitimate destination of public life and the honorable award of party service. During the greater part of his career the conditions of journalism had been rather squalid and servile. He was really great as a journalist. He was truly and highly fit for nothing else, but seeing less deserving and less capable men about him advanced from one post of distinction to another he wondered why his turn proved so tardy in coming, and when it would come. It did come with a rush. What more natural than that he should believe it real instead of the empty pageant of a vision?