rlow Weed,
convinced of the hopelessness of Whig success, went off to Europe for
six months preceding the campaign. The _Tribune_ talked of victory,
but in his private correspondence Greeley declared that "we shall lose
the Legislature and probably everything at home."

[Footnote 421: Horatio Seymour, 264,121; Washington Hunt,
241,525.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p. 166.]

Winfield Scott seems to have been the only man really surprised. "He
looked forward buoyantly to an easy and triumphant victory," says
Weed, who dined with him on a Sunday in October.[422] But, though
Pierce's election produced no surprise, his majority of 212 electoral
votes astounded everybody. It eclipsed the result of the romantic
campaign of 1840, and seemed to verify the assertions of John Van
Buren, in his Fourth of July speech at Tammany Hall. The people were
not only tired of slavery agitation, but trade was good, the country
prosperous, and a reunited Democracy, by unreservedly indorsing the
compromise measures of 1850, promised settled conditions.

[Footnote 422: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
219.]

It is not without historical interest to notice that Gerrit Smith, one
of the most uncompromising opponents of slavery in any country,
received an election to Congress in a district that gave Pierce and
Seymour upward of one thousand majority. It showed that the
smouldering fire, which had suddenly blazed out in the Free-soil
campaign of 1848, was not extinguished by the coalition of Barnburners
and Hunkers, and the acceptance of the great compromise by the two
Baltimore conventions. Gerrit Smith was a noble example of the
champions of freedom. He had not the passion of Garrison, or the
genius of Henry Ward Beecher; but his deep voice of marvellous
richness, the grace and dignity of his person, and the calm, gentle,
dispassionate tone in which he declared his principles without fear,
was to command the earnest and respectful attention of the national
House of Representatives.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HARDS AND THE SOFTS

1853

In New York a Democratic victory had come to mean a succession of
Democratic defeats. It was so after the victory of 1844; and it was
destined to be so after the victory of 1852. But defeat occurred
differently this time. In 1847 the Barnburners had seceded from the
Hunkers; in 1853 the Hunkers seceded from the Barnburners. For six
years the Barnburners had played bold po