n Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was
going to hell, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution
were nothing in comparison with what we should see here." If most of the
people at the North had not had heads more cool and sensible than was
the one which rested upon the shoulders of the ardent "Ben" Wade, the
alarming prediction of that lively spokesman might have been fulfilled.
Fortunately, however, as Mr. Julian admits, "the feeling in Congress was
far more intense than [it was] throughout the country." The experienced
denizens of the large Northern cities read in a critical temper the
tirades of journalist critics, who assumed to know everything. The
population of the small towns and the village neighborhoods, though a
little bewildered by the echoes of denunciation which reached them from
the national capital, yet by instinct, or by a divine guidance, held
fast to their faith in their President. Thus the rank and file of the
Republican party refused to follow the field officers in a revolt
against the general. No better fortune ever befell this very fortunate
nation. If the anti-slavery extremists had been able to reinforce their
own pressure by the ponderous impact of the popular will, and so had
pushed the President from his "border-state policy" and from his general
scheme of advancing only very cautiously along the anti-slavery line, it
is hardly conceivable either that the Union would have been saved or
that slavery would have been destroyed.

On August 19, 1862, the good, impulsive, impractical Horace Greeley
published in his newspaper, the New York "Tribune," an address to the
President, to which he gave an awe-inspiring title, "The Prayer of
20,000,000 of People." It was an extremely foolish paper, and its title,
like other parts of it, was false. Only those persons who were agitators
for immediate emancipation could say amen to this mad prayer, and they
were far from being even a large percentage of "20,000,000 of people."
Yet these men, being active missionaries and loud preachers in behalf of
a measure in which they had perfect faith, made a show and exerted an
influence disproportioned to their numbers. Therefore their prayer,[34]
though laden with blunders of fact and reasoning, fairly expressed
malcontent Republicanism. Moreover, multitudes who could not quite join
in the prayer would read it and would be moved by it. The influence of
the "Tribune" was enormous. Colonel McClure truly sa