Volume III Part 6 (1/2)

”Informal ballot: Morgan, 25; King, 16; d.i.c.kinson, 15; Sedgwick, 11; Field, 7; Raymond, 6; Hunt, 4; Selden, 1; blank, 1. Whole number, 86.

Necessary to a choice, 44.

”First formal ballot: Morgan, 39; King, 16; d.i.c.kinson, 11; Raymond, 8; Sedgwick, 7; Field, 5.

”Second formal ballot: Morgan, 50; d.i.c.kinson, 13; King, 11; Raymond, 9; Field, 2; Sedgwick, 1.”--_Ibid._, February 3.]

The Democrats presented Erastus Corning of Albany, then a member of Congress. Like Morgan, Corning was wealthy. Like Morgan, too, he had a predilection for politics, having served as alderman, state senator, mayor, and congressman. He belonged to a cla.s.s of business men whose experience and ability, when turned to public affairs, prove of decided value to their State and country. ”We should be glad,” said the _Tribune_, ”to see more men of Mr. Corning's social and business position brought forward for Congress and the Legislature.”[875] The first ballot, in joint convention, gave Morgan 86 to 70 for Corning, Speaker Callicot voting for John A. Dix, and one fiery Radical for Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson. Thus did Thurlow Weed score another victory.

Greeley was willing to make any combination. Raymond, Sedgwick, Ward Hunt, and even David Dudley Field would quickly have appealed to him.

The deft hand of Weed, however, if not the money of Morgan, prevented combinations until the Governor, as a second choice, controlled the election.[876] This success resulted in a combination of Democrats and conservative Republicans, giving Weed the vast patronage of the New York ca.n.a.ls.

[Footnote 875: New York _Tribune_, October 7, 1863.

The Democratic caucus stood 28 for Erastus Corning, 25 for Fernando Wood, and scattering 18.

The vote of the Senate stood: Morgan, 23; Erastus Corning, 7; 2 absent or silent. On the first ballot the a.s.sembly gave Morgan 64, Corning 62, Fernando Wood 1, John A. Dix 1 (cast by Speaker Callicot). On a second ballot all the Unionists voted with Callicot for Dix, giving him 65 to 63 for Corning and placing him in nomination. In joint convention Morgan was elected by 86 votes to 70 for Corning, one (Callicot's) for Dix, and 1 for d.i.c.kinson.--_Ibid._, February 4.]

[Footnote 876: ”My dear Weed: It is difficult for me to express my personal obligations to you for this renewed evidence of your friends.h.i.+p, as manifested by the result of yesterday's proceedings at Albany.”--Letter of Edwin D. Morgan, February 3, 1863. Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 430.]

Perhaps it was only coincidental that Weed's withdrawal from the _Evening Journal_ concurred with Morgan's election, but his farewell editorial, written while gloom and despondency filled the land, indicated that he unerringly read the signs of the times. ”I differ widely with my party about the best means of crus.h.i.+ng the rebellion,”

he said. ”I can neither impress others with my views nor surrender my own solemn convictions. The alternative of living in strife with those whom I have esteemed, or withdrawing, is presented. I have not hesitated in choosing the path of peace as the path of duty. If those who differ with me are right, and the country is carried safely through its present struggle, all will be well and 'n.o.body hurt.'”[877] This did not mean that Weed ”has ceased to be a Republican,” as Greeley put it,[878] but that, while refusing to become an Abolitionist of the Chase and Sumner and Greeley type, he declined longer to urge his conservative views upon readers who possessed the spirit of Radicals. Years afterward he wrote that ”from the outbreak of the rebellion, I knew no party, nor did I care for any except the party of the Union.”[879]

[Footnote 877: Albany _Evening Journal_, January 28, 1863.]

[Footnote 878: New York _Tribune_, January 30, 1863.]

[Footnote 879: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

485.]

At the time of his retirement from the _Journal_, Weed was sixty-six years of age, able-bodied, rich, independent, and satisfied if not surfeited. ”So far as all things personal are concerned,” he said, ”my work is done.”[880] Yet a trace of unhappiness revealed itself.

Perfect peace did not come with the possession of wealth.[881]

Moreover, his political course had grieved and separated friends. For thirty years he looked forward with pleasurable emotions to the time when, released from the cares of journalism, he might return to Rochester, spending his remaining days on a farm, in the suburbs of that city, near the banks of the Genesee River; but in 1863 he found his old friends so hostile, charging him with the defeat of Wadsworth, that he abandoned the project and sought a home in New York.[882]

[Footnote 880: Albany _Evening Journal_, January 28, 1863.]

[Footnote 881: ”Let it pa.s.s whether or not the editor of the _Tribune_ has been intensely ambitious for office. It would have been a blessed thing for the country if the editor of the _Journal_ had been impelled by the same pa.s.sion. For avarice is more ign.o.ble than ambition, and the craving for jobs has a more corrupting influence, alike on the individual and the public, than aspiration to office.”--New York _Tribune_, December 12, 1862.]

[Footnote 882: Thurlow Weed, _Autobiography_, pp. 360-361.]

For several years Weed had made his political headquarters in that city. Indeed, No. 12 Astor House was as famous in its day as 49 Broadway became during the subsequent leaders.h.i.+p of Thomas C. Platt.

It was the cradle of the ”Amens” forty years before the Fifth Avenue Hotel became the abode of that remarkable organization. From 1861 to 1865, owing to the enormous political patronage growing out of the war, the lobbies of the Astor House were crowded with politicians from all parts of New York, making ingress and egress almost impossible. In the midst of this throng sat Thurlow Weed, cool and patient, possessing the keen judgment of men so essential to leaders.h.i.+p. ”When I was organizing the Internal Revenue Office in 1862-3,” wrote George S. Boutwell, ”Mr. Weed gave me information in regard to candidates for office in the State of New York, including their relations to the factions that existed, with as much fairness as he could have commanded if he had had no relation to either one.”[883]

[Footnote 883: George S. Boutwell, _Sixty Years in Public Affairs_, Vol. 2, p. 207.]

Although opposed to the course of the Radicals, Weed sternly rebuked those, now called Copperheads,[884] who endeavored to force peace by paralysing the arm of the government. Their denunciation of arrests and of the suspension of _habeas corpus_ gradually included the discouragement of enlistments, the encouragement of desertion, and resistance to the draft, until, at last, the spirit of opposition invaded halls of legislation as well as public meetings and the press.

[Footnote 884: This opprobrious epithet first appeared in the New York _Tribune_ of January 12, 1863, and in the _Times_ of February 13.]

To check this display of disloyalty the Union people, regardless of party, formed loyal or Union League clubs in the larger cities, whose densely packed meetings commanded the ablest speakers of the country.