Volume II Part 24 (1/2)

But the New Yorker whom the Republican ma.s.ses most desired to hear and see was William H. Seward. Accordingly, in the latter part of August he started on a five weeks' tour through the Western States, beginning at Detroit and closing at Cleveland. At every point where train or steamboat stopped, if only for fifteen minutes, thousands of people awaited his coming. The day he spoke in Chicago, it was estimated that two hundred thousand visitors came to that city. Rhodes suggests that ”it was then he reached the climax of his career.”[584]

[Footnote 584: ”Seward filled the minds of Republicans, attracting such attention and honour, and arousing such enthusiasm, that the closing months of the campaign were the most brilliant epoch of his life. It was then he reached the climax of his career.”--James F.

Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. 2, p. 493.]

Seward's speeches contained nothing new, and in substance they resembled one another. But in freshness of thought and kaleidoscopic phraseology, they were attractive, full of eloquence, and of statesmanlike comment, lifting the campaign, then just opening, upon a high plane of political and moral patriotism. He avoided all personalities; he indicated no disappointment;[585] his praise of Lincoln was in excellent taste; and without evasion or concealment, but with a ripeness of experience that had mellowed and enlightened him, he talked of ”higher law” and the ”irrepressible conflict” in terms that made men welcome rather than fear their discussion. ”Let this battle be decided in favour of freedom in the territories,” he declared, ”and not one slave will ever be carried into the territories of the United States, and that will end the irrepressible conflict.”[586]

[Footnote 585: ”Seward charged his defeat chiefly to Greeley. He felt toward that influential editor as much vindictiveness as was possible in a man of so amiable a nature. But he did not retire to his tent.”--James F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. 2, p.

494.

”The magnanimity of Mr. Seward, since the result of the convention was known,” wrote James Russell Lowell, ”has been a greater ornament to him and a greater honour to his party than his election to the Presidency would have been.”--_Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1860; _Lowell's Political Essays_, p. 34.]

[Footnote 586: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, pp.

462-66.]

The growth and resources of the great Northwest, whose development he attributed to the exclusion of slave labour, seemed to inspire him with the hope and faith of youth, and he spoke of its reservation for freedom and its settlement and upbuilding in the critical moment of the country's history as providential, since it must rally the free States of the Atlantic coast to call back the ancient principles which had been abandoned by the government to slavery. ”We resign to you,”

he said, ”the banner of human rights and human liberty on this continent, and we bid you be firm, bold, and onward, and then you may hope that we will be able to follow you.” It was in one of these moments of exaltation when he seemed to be lifted into the higher domain of prophecy that he made the prediction afterward realised by the Alaska treaty. ”Standing here and looking far off into the Northwest,” he said, ”I see the Russian as he busily occupies himself in establis.h.i.+ng seaports and towns and fortifications on the verge of this continent as the outposts of St. Petersburg, and I can say, 'Go on, and build up your outposts all along the coast, up even to the Arctic Ocean, for they will yet become the outposts of my own country--monuments of the civilisation of the United States in the Northwest.”[587]

[Footnote 587: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 464.]

At the beginning of the canva.s.s, Republican confidence and enthusiasm contrasted strangely with the apathy of the Democratic party, caused by its two tickets, two organisations, and two incompatible platforms.

It was recognised early in the campaign that Douglas could carry no slave State unless it be Missouri; and, although the Douglas and Bell fusion awaked some hope, it was not until the fusion electoral ticket included supporters of Breckenridge that the struggle became vehement and energetic. New York's thirty-five votes were essential to the election of Lincoln, and early in September a determined effort began to unite the three parties against him. The Hards resisted the movement, but many merchants and capitalists of New York City, apprehensive of the dissolution of the Union if Lincoln were elected, and promising large sums of money to the campaign, forced the subst.i.tution of seven Breckenridge electors in place of as many Douglas supporters, giving Bell ten, Breckenridge seven, and Douglas eighteen. ”It is understood,” said the _Tribune_, ”that four nabobs have already subscribed twenty-five thousand dollars each, and that one million is to be raised.”[588]

[Footnote 588: New York _Tribune_, October 19, 1860.]

All this disturbed Lincoln. ”I think there will be the most extraordinary effort ever made to carry New York for Douglas,” he wrote Weed on August 17. ”You and all others who write me from your State think the effort cannot succeed, and I hope you are right.

Still, it will require close watching and great efforts on the other side.”[589] After fusion did succeed, the Republican managers found encouragement in the fact that a majority of the Americans in the western part of the State,[590] following the lead of Putnam, belonged to the party of Lincoln, while the Germans gave comforting evidence of their support. On his return from the West Seward a.s.sured Lincoln ”that this State will redeem all the pledges we have made.”[591] Then came the October verdict from Pennsylvania and Indiana. ”Emanc.i.p.ation or revolution is now upon us,” said the Charleston _Mercury_.[592] Yet the hope of the New York fusionists, encouraged by a stock panic in Wall Street and by the unconcealed statement of Howell Cobb of Georgia, then secretary of the treasury, that Lincoln's election would be followed by disunion and a serious derangement of the financial interests of the country, kept the Empire State violently excited. It was reported in Southern newspapers that William B. Astor had contributed one million of dollars in aid of the fusion ticket.[593] It was a formidable combination of elements.

Heretofore the Republican party had defeated them separately--now it met them as a united whole, when antagonisms, ceasing to be those of rational debate, had become those of fierce and furious pa.s.sion.

Greeley p.r.o.nounced it ”a struggle as intense, as vehement, and as energetic, as had ever been known,” in New York.[594] Yet Thurlow Weed's confidence never wavered. ”The fusion leaders have largely increased their fund,” he wrote Lincoln, three days before the election, ”and they are now using money lavishly. This stimulates and to some extent inspires confidence, and all the confederates are at work. Some of our friends are nervous. But I have no fear of the result in this State.”[595]

[Footnote 589: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

297.]

[Footnote 590: ”The names of eighty-one thousand New York men who voted for Fillmore in 1856 are inscribed on Republican poll-lists.”--New York _Tribune_, September 11, 1860.]

[Footnote 591: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 471.]

[Footnote 592: October 18, 1860.]

[Footnote 593: Charleston _Mercury_, cited by _National Intelligencer_, November 1, 1860; Richmond _Enquirer_, November 2.]

[Footnote 594: Horace Greeley, _American Conflict_, Vol. 1, p. 300.]

[Footnote 595: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

300.]

After the election, returns came in rapidly. Before midnight they foreshadowed Lincoln's success, and the next morning's _Tribune_ estimated that the Republicans had carried the electoral and state tickets by 30,000 to 50,000, with both branches of the Legislature and twenty-three out of thirty-three congressmen. The official figures did not change this prophecy, except to fix Lincoln's majority at 50,136 and Morgan's plurality at 63,460. Lincoln received 4374 votes more than Morgan, but Kelley ran 27,698 behind the fusion electoral ticket, showing that the Bell and Everett men declined to vote for the Softs'