more, was one of the chief dispensers of your patronage here; and that such devoted compatriots as A. H. Wells and John Hoops were lifted by you out of pauperism into independence, as I am glad I was not; and yet an inquiry from you as to my needs and means at that time would have been timely and held ever in great remembrance.

"In the Harrison campaign of 1840, I was again designated to edit a campaign paper. I published it as well, and ought to have made something by it, in spite of its extremely low price. My extreme poverty was the main reason why I did not. . It compelled me to hire press-work, mailing, etc., done by the job, and high prices for extra work nearly ate me up. At the close, I was still without property and in debt, but this paper had rather improved my position.

"Now came the great scramble of the swell-mob of coon minstrels and cider-suckers at Washington, I not being counted in. Several regiments of them went on from this city; but no one of the whole crowd-though I say it who should not-had done so much towards General Harrison's nomination and election as yours respectfully. I asked nothing, expected nothing; but you, Governor Seward, ought to have asked that I be Postmaster of New York. Your asking would have been in vain; but it would have been an act of grace neither wasted nor undeserved.

"I soon after started The Tribune, because I was urged to do so by certain of your friends, and because such a paper was needed here. I was promised certain pecuniary aid in so doing. It might have been given me without cost or risk to any one. All I ever had was a loan by piecemeal of one thousand dollars from James Coggshell (God bless his honored memory). I did not ask for this, and I think it is the one sole case in which I ever received a pecuniary favor from a political associate. I am very thankful that he did not die till it was fully repaid.

"And let me here honor one grateful recollection. When the Whig party, under your rule, had offices to give, my name was never thought of; but when, in 1842-43, we were hopelessly out of power, I was honored with the party nomination for State Printer. When we came again to have a State Printer to elect as well as nominate, the place went to Weed, as it ought. Yet it is worth something to know that there was once a time when it was not deemed too great a sacrifice to recognize me as belonging to your household. If a new office had not since been created on purpose to give its valuable patronage to H. J. Raymond, and enable St. John to show forth his Times as the organ of the Whig State Administration, I should have been still more grateful.

"In 1848 your star again rose, and my warmest hopes were realized in your election to the Senate. I was no longer needy, and had no more claim

than desire to be recognized by General Taylor. I think I had some claim to forbearance from you. What I received thereupon was a most humiliating lecture in the shape of a decision in the libel case of Redfield and Pringle, and an obligation to publish it in my own and the other journals of our supposed firm. I thought, and still think, this lecture needlessly cruel and mortifying.

"The plaintiffs, after using my columns to the extent of their needs or desires, stopped writing, and called on me for the name of their assailant. I proffered it to them—a thoroughly responsible name. They refused to accept it unless it should prove to be one of the four or five first men in Bataviawhen they had known from the first who it was, and that it was neither of them. They would not accept that which they had demanded. They sued me instead for money, and money you were at liberty to give them to your heart's content. I do not think you were at liberty to humiliate me in the eyes of my own and your public as you did. I think you exalted your own judicial sternness and fearlessness unduly at my expense. I think you had a better occasion for the display of these qualities when Webb threw himself untimely upon you for a pardon which he had done all a man could do to merit. (His paper is paying you for it now.)

"I have publicly set forth my view of your and our duty with respect to fusion, Nebraska, and party designations. I will not repeat any of that. I have referred also to Weed's reading me out of the Whig party, my crime being, in this as in some other things, that of doing to-day what more politic persons will not be ready to do till to-morrow.

"Let me speak of the late canvass. I was once sent to Congress for ninety days merely to enable Jim Brooks to secure a seat therein for four years. I think I never hinted to any human being that I would have liked to be put forward for any place. But James W. White (you hardly know how good and true a man he is) started my name for Congress, and Brooks's packed delegation thought I could help him through, so I was put on behind him.

'But this last spring, after the Nebraska question had created a new state of things at the North, one or two personal friends of no political consideration suggested my name as a candidate for Governor, and I did not discourage them. Soon the persons who were afterwards mainly instrumental in nominating Clark came about me and asked if I could secure the Know-Nothing vote. I told them I neither would nor could touch it. On the contrary, I loathed and repelled it. Thereupon, they turned upon Clark.

"I said nothing-did nothing. A hundred people asked me who should be run for Governor. I sometimes indicated Patterson. I never hinted at

my own name.

But by-and-by Weed came down and called me to him to tell me why he could not support me for Governor. (I had never asked nor counted on his support.)

"I am sure Weed did not mean to humiliate me, but he did. The upshot of his discourse (very cautiously stated) was this: If I were a candidate for Governor, I should beat, not only myself, but you. Perhaps that was true. But, as I had not in any manner solicited his or your support, I thought this might have been said to my friends rather than to me. I suspect it is true that I could not have been elected Governor as a Whig. But had he and you been favorable, there would have been a party in the State ere this which could and would have elected me to any post, without injuring your self or endangering your re-election.

"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. I 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. What little fight there has been I have stirred up. 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 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 and take a terrible responsibility, in order to prevent the Whigs uniting upon James W. Barker in order to defeat Fernando Wood.

"Had Barker been elected here, neither you nor I could walk these streets without being hooted, and Know-Nothingism would have swept like a prairię

fire. I stopped Barker's election at the cost of incurring the deadliest enmity of the defeated gang; and I have been rebuked for it by the Lieutenant-governor's paper. At the critical moment he came out against John Wheeler in favor of Charles H. Marshall, who would have been your deadliest enemy in the House; and even your Colonel-general's paper, which was even with me in insisting that Wheeler should be returned, wheeled about at the last moment, and went in for Marshall, The Tribune alone clinging to Wheeler till the last. I rejoice that they who turned so suddenly were not able to turn all their readers.

"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 shall 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 but to glide out of the newspaper world as quietly and 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 overtasked 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.

"Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, present."

The venerable Thurlow Weed, the only one of the firm yet alive, deeply regretted that the letter had been forced out, because "it destroyed ideals of disinterested generosity, which relieved political life from so much that is selfish, sordid, and rapacious."

Mr. Seward was made Secretary of State by President Lincoln after this angry altercation, and I think his relations with Mr. Greeley were never very cordial afterwards. The private letter, made public, hung like a cloud between them.

XIII.

EMINENT OLD MEN.-VICE-PRESIDENT GEORGE M. DALLAS.W. W. CORCORAN.-PRESIDENT MILLARD FILLMORE.-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT.-HENRY C. CAREY.

I Do not know anything more charming, always excepting a lovely woman, than a handsome old man-one who, like a winter apple, is ruddy and ripe with time, and yet sound to the heart. Such a man was George M. Dallas at sixty, with his white hair, stately step, and graceful figure; and not unlike him in manner and in person, at about the same age, were W. W. Corcoran, of Washington, and Edward Everett, of Boston. Sumner, too, though of a different type, bore his age grandly, with his classic face and iron-gray locks.

Mr. Fillmore was one of the most impressive men I ever saw when he became President, on the death of General Taylor, in July, 1850. At the inauguration of his successor, Franklin Pierce, March 4, 1853, the incoming and outgoing chiefs were fine specimens of vigorous manhood. Fillmore was in his fiftyfourth year and Pierce in his fiftieth. The ceremonies were unusually pleasing, and nothing could exceed the courtly manner of Fillmore as he received, and parted from, Pierce. The Whigs had fallen out with the former because of his course on the Compromise measures; and Webster, his Secretary of State, with Rufus Choate, and many others of equal note, had been cool to General Scott, the Whig candidate in 1852. The courtesies interchanged between the ex-President and the President elect were something more than cold formalities.

At this time (1853) there was no personage at the capital who looked like a great man so much as General Winfield Scott. He was in his sixty-seventh year, and his history was as eventful as his appearance was distinguished. Of lofty, almost gigantic, stature, erect and soldierly, with a face (now before