e. Confessing with much
feeling to the great disappointment of his life, he said, 'I hoped to
make my friend, Mr. Seward, President, and I thought I could serve my
country in so doing.' He was a larger man intellectually than I
anticipated, and of finer fibre. There was in him an element of
gentleness and a large humanity which won me, and I was pleased no
less than surprised."--_Ibid._, Vol. 2, p. 292.]

Greeley had played a very important part in the historic convention.
The press gave him full credit for his activity, and he admitted it
in his jubilant letter to Pike; but after returning to New York he
seemed to think it wise to minimise his influence, claiming that the
result would have been the same had he remained at home. "The fact
that the four conspicuous doubtful States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Indiana, and Illinois," he wrote, "unanimously testified that they
could not be carried for Seward was decisive. Against this Malakoff
the most brilliant evolutions of political strategy could not
avail."[570] This two-column article, modestly concealing his own
work, might not have led to an editorial war between the three great
Republican editors of the State, had not Greeley, in the exordium of a
speech, published in the _Tribune_ of May 23, exceeded the limits of
human endurance. "The past is dead," he said. "Let the dead past bury
it, and let the mourners, if they will, go about the streets."

[Footnote 570: New York _Tribune_, May 22, 1860.]

The exultant sentences exasperated Raymond, who held the opinion which
generally obtained among New York Republican leaders, that Greeley's
persistent hostility was not only responsible for Seward's defeat, but
that under the guise of loyalty to the party's highest interests he
had been insidious and revengeful, and Raymond believed it needed only
a bold and loud-spoken accusation against him to fill the mind of the
public with his guilt. In this spirit he wrote a stinging reply. "With
the generosity which belongs to his nature, and which a feeling not
unlike remorse may have stimulated into unwonted activity," said this
American Junius, "Mr. Greeley awards to others the credit which
belongs transcendently to himself. The main work of the Chicago
convention was the defeat of Governor Seward, and in that endeavour
Mr. Greeley laboured harder, and did tenfold more, than the whole
family of Blairs, together with all the gubernatorial candidates, to
whom he modestly hands