ness and
amidst much enthusiasm, Henry J. Raymond was nominated. This deeply
wounded Greeley. "He had cheerfully withdrawn his own name," wrote
Weed, "but he could not submit patiently to the nomination of his
personal, professional, and political rival."[446] Greeley believed
it was not the convention, but Weed himself, who brought it about. On
the contrary, Weed declared that he had no thought of Raymond in that
connection until his name was suggested by others. Nevertheless, the
_Tribune's_ editor held to his own opinion. "No other name could have
been put upon the ticket so bitterly humbling to me,"[447] he
afterward wrote Seward. To Greeley, Raymond was "The little Villain of
the _Times_;" to Raymond, Greeley was "The big Villain of the
_Tribune_."[448] In any aspect, Raymond was an unfortunate nomination
for Weed, since it began the quarrel that culminated in the defeat of
Seward at Chicago in 1860.
[Footnote 446: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
227.]
[Footnote 447: _Ibid._, p. 280.]
[Footnote 448: In a letter to Charles A. Dana, dated March 2, 1856,
Greeley indicates his feeling toward Raymond. "Have we got to
surrender a page of the next _Weekly_ to Raymond's bore of an
address?" he says, referring to the Pittsburgh convention's appeal.
"The man who could inflict six columns on a long-suffering public, on
such an occasion, cannot possibly know enough to write an address."]
Early in the campaign, Greeley favoured dropping the name of Whig and
organising an anti-Nebraska or Republican party, with a ticket of
Whigs and Democrats, as had been done in some of the Western States.
But Seward and Weed, with a majority of the Whig leaders, thought that
while fusion might be advisable wherever the party was essentially
weak, as in Ohio and Indiana, it was wiser, in States like New York
and Massachusetts where Whigs were in power, to retain the party name
and organisation.[449] In so deciding, however, they agreed with
Greeley that the platform should be thoroughly anti-Nebraska, and they
gave it a touch that kindled the old fire in the hearts of the
anti-slavery veterans. It condemned the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, approved the course of the New York senators and
representatives who resisted it, declared that it discharged the party
from further obligation to support any compromise with slavery, and
denounced "popular sovereignty" as a false and deceptive cry, "too
flimsy to misle
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