rly as large as those
held four years before. Seward speaks of fifteen thousand men gathered
at midday in Utica to hear Erastus Root, and of a thousand unable to
enter the hall at night while he addressed a thousand more within.
Fillmore expressed the fear that Whigs would mistake these great
meetings for the election, and omit the necessary arrangements to get
the vote out. "I am tired of mass-meetings," wrote Seward. "But they
will go on."[339]

[Footnote 339: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 723.]

Seward and Weed were not happy during this campaign. The friends of
Clay, incensed at his defeat in 1840, had pronounced them the chief
conspirators. Murmurs had been muffled until after Tyler's betrayal of
the party and Seward's retirement, but when these sources of possible
favours ran dry, the voice of noisy detraction reached Albany and
Auburn. It was not an ordinary scold, confined to a few conservatives;
but the censure of strong language, filled with vindictiveness,
charged Weed with revolutionary theories, tending to unsettle the
rights of property, and Seward with abolition notions and a desire to
win the Irish Catholic vote for selfish purposes. In February, 1844,
it was not very politely hinted to Seward that he go abroad during the
campaign; and by June, Weed talked despondingly, proposing to leave
the _Journal_. Seward had the spirit of the Greeks. "If you resign,"
he said, "there will be no hope left for ten thousand men who hold on
because of their confidence in you and me."[340] In another month Weed
had become the proprietor as well as the editor of the _Evening
Journal_.

[Footnote 340: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 719.

"I think you cannot leave the _Journal_ without giving up the whole
army to dissension and overthrow. I agree that if, by remaining, you
save it, you only draw down double denunciation upon yourself and me.
Nor do I see the way through and beyond that. But there will be some
way through. I grant, then, that, for yourself and me, it is wise and
profitable that you leave. I must be left without the possibility of
restoration, without a defender, without an organ. Nothing else will
satisfy those who think they are shaded. Then, and not until then,
shall I have passed through the not unreasonable punishment for too
much success. But the party--the country? They cannot bear your
withdrawal. I think I am not mistaken in this. Let us adhere, then.
Stand fast.