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CHAPTER XXI

THE TIMES AND GREELEY'S TRIUMPH

Greeley's Characterization of Raymond—Need for the Times—Greeley a great moral factor—Faults in New York papers—Times issued—Birth of Republican party—Weakness of Seward—Greeley's longing for leadership—Interview with Weed—Raymond nominated for lieutenant-governor—Letter to Seward—Weed and Seward lacking in perception—Lincoln-Douglas debates—Chicago convention of 1860.

As Bennett and the Herald had inspired Greeley to make in the Tribune, a better paper, so it was Greeley and his Tribune that inspired Raymond to be the sponsor of a paper that would be less radical, less addicted to all the "isms," than the Tribune.

Raymond, as we learn from his correspondence with R. W. Griswold, had gone to Greeley when a youth, brimming over with idealism and literary ambition. "I never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies, who evinced so much and so versatile ability in journalism as he did," Greeley wrote later of Raymond. "Abler and stronger men I may have met; a cleverer, readier, more generally efficient journalist I never saw. He is the only assistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing more work than any human brain and frame could be expected to endure. His services were more valuable in proportion to their cost than those of any one who ever worked on the Tribune."^[1]

As Raymond came to know the city and the men influential in politics, he saw that there was room for another

1. Alexander, ii, 160.

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