mination to Congress had been influenced somewhat by the recent
assault on Charles Sumner. "Preston Brooks won't hurt him," said the
leader of the Fifth Ward, in Utica.[496]

[Footnote 496: Alfred R. Conkling, _Life and Letters of Roscoe
Conkling_, p. 77.]

The keynote of the campaign, however, was not spoken until Seward made
his historic speech at Rochester on October 25. The October success in
Pennsylvania had thrilled the Republicans; and the New York election
promised a victory like that of 1856. Whatever advantage could be
gained by past events and future expectations was now Seward's.
Lincoln's famous declaration, "I believe this government cannot endure
permanently half slave and half free," had been uttered in June, and
his joint debate with Douglas, concluded on October 15, had cleared
the political atmosphere, making it plain that popular sovereignty was
not the pathway for Republicans to follow. Seward's utterance,
therefore, was to be the last word in the campaign.

It was not entirely clear just what this utterance would be. Seward
had shown much independence of late. In the preceding February his
course on the army bill caused severe comment. Because of
difficulties with the Mormons in Utah it was proposed to increase the
army; but Republicans objected, believing the additional force would
be improperly used in Kansas. Seward, however, spoke and voted for the
bill. "He is perfectly bedevilled," wrote Senator Fessenden; "he
thinks himself wiser than all of us."[497] Later, in March, he caught
something of the popular-sovereignty idea--enough, at least, to draw a
mild protest from Salmon P. Chase. "I regretted," he wrote, "the
apparent countenance you gave to the idea that the Douglas doctrine of
popular sovereignty will do for us to stand upon for the
present."[498] Seward did not go so far as Greeley and Raymond, but
his expressions indicated that States were to be admitted with or
without slavery as the people themselves decided. Before, he had
insisted that Congress had the right to make conditions; now, his
willingness cheerfully to co-operate with Douglas and other "new
defenders of the sacred cause in Kansas" seemed to favour a new
combination, if not a new party. In other words, Seward had been
feeling his way until it aroused a faint suspicion that he was
trimming to catch the moderate element of his party. If he had had any
thought of harmony of feeling between Douglas and the Republicans,
how