cipation Proclamation, and discharged McClellan. Smith is a cipher on the right hand of the Seward integer—by himself, nothing but a doughface. Bates is a fossil of the Silurian era—red sandstone, at least—and should never have been quarried out of the rocks in which he was imbedded. Blair was thrown into a retrograde position by the unfortunate quarrel of his brother Frank with Fremont. There must be a reorganization of the Cabinet; Seward, Smith and Bates must go out."[1]
Greeley was right, and his success as the moral voice of the North was soon to be demonstrated in a way that he could scarcely have anticipated,—by the downfall of Thurlow Weed, his former partner, but now his bitter enemy.
In 1863 Greeley and Weed, in a stiff battle in the New York Legislature, backed opposing candidates for the U. S. Senate. Weed succeeded in electing Edwin D. Morgan, with the assistance of Morgan's money, but announced, practically at the same time, his withdrawal from the Albany Evening Journal. He was rich and independent, but, although at the time of his retirement he had spent thirty years in building up a powerful political machine, he was so unpopular throughout the state that he was obliged to give up his long-cherished idea of removing to a farm near Rochester, there to spend his last days. So hostile was the feeling toward him in that section that he abandoned this idea and settled in New York City.
Commenting on this change in Weed's political fortunes, Greeley took the opportunity to compare the statements previously made by Weed and Raymond about his own ambitions:
"Let it pass whether or not the editor of the Tribune has been intensely ambitious for office. It would have
- ↑ Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax, 186,
