it in his heart
to speak of him as "an able and agreeable lawyer of good fortune and
competent speaking talent, who would make a highly respectable
governor." But 1850 was not Seymour's year. His associates upon the
ticket were elected by several thousand majority, and day after day
his own success seemed probable. The New York City combine gave him a
satisfactory majority; in two or three Hudson river counties he made
large gains; but the official count gave Hunt two hundred and
sixty-two plurality,[400] with a safe Whig majority in the
Legislature. The Whigs also elected a majority of the congressmen.
"These results," wrote Thurlow Weed, "will encourage the friends of
freedom to persevere by all constitutional means and through all
rightful channels in their efforts to restrain the extension of
slavery, and to wipe out that black spot wherever it can be done
without injury to the rights and interests of others."[401]

[Footnote 400: Washington Hunt, 214,614; Horatio Seymour,
214,352.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

[Footnote 401: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 189.]

CHAPTER XIII

THE WHIGS' WATERLOO

1850-1852

The Assembly of 1851 has a peculiar, almost romantic interest for New
Yorkers. A very young man, full of promise and full of performance,
the brilliant editor of a later day, the precocious politician of that
day, became its speaker. Henry Jarvis Raymond was then in his
thirty-first year. New York City had sent him to the Assembly in 1850,
and he leaped into prominence the week he took his seat. He was ready
in debate, temperate in language, quick in the apprehension of
parliamentary rules, and of phenomenal tact. The unexcelled courtesy
and grace of manner with which he dropped the measured and beautiful
sentences that made him an orator, undoubtedly aided in obtaining the
position to which his genius entitled him. But his political
instincts, also, were admirable, and his aptness as an unerring
counsellor in the conduct of complicated affairs always turned to the
advantage of his party. There came a time, after the assassination of
President Lincoln, when he made a mistake so grievous that he was
never able to regain his former standing; when he was dropped from the
list of party leaders; when his cordial affiliation with members of
the Republican organisation ceased; when his removal from the
chairmanship of the National Committee was ratified by the action