observable that he had not, among all his so-called journalistic supporters, a real friend. Although Seward was loyal. Weed sulked in his camp over some petty appointment. In order to bring him back into the field, the President was obliged to write him a humble and somewhat apologetic letter.
"I have been brought to fear recently," the President wrote, with characteristic tenderness, "that somehow, by commission or omission, I have caused you some degree of pain. I have never entertained an unkind feeling or a disparaging thought towards you; and if I have said or done anything which has been construed into such unkindness or disparagement, it has been misconstrued." [1]
From Greeley, who had become to a large extent a party leader, Lincoln could expect little. Weed, as well as Greeley, praised General U. S. Grant, insinuating that he might possibly be a candidate to succeed Lincoln, but when the convention assembled at Baltimore, on June 7, 1864, the opposition had weakened. The platform, agreeable to both conservatives and radicals, was written by Henry J. Raymond, who reached, at this convention, the zenith of his power and influence.[2]
The development of a presidential boom for Horatio Seymour resulted in Bennett's veering once more toward the Democratic party, though he had been a merciless critic of Seymour as Governor. One reads the speeches and letters of the Democratic governor with amazement at the man's stupidity and bad manners. The only political platform that men Uke Seymour had was the veryhonest criticism of Lincoln by men of the type of Greeley. Unfortunately for himself, Seymour never realized that men like Greeley and Raymond, or even Weed, while
