er
name could have been put on the ticket so bitterly humbling to me as
that which was selected. The nomination was given to Raymond; the
fight left to me. And, Governor Seward, _I have made it_, though it be
conceited in me to say so. Even Weed has not been (I speak of his
paper) hearty in this contest, while the journal of the Whig
lieutenant-governor has taken care of its own interests and let the
canvass take care of itself, as it early declared it would do. That
journal has (because of its milk-and-water course) some twenty
thousand subscribers in this city and its suburbs, and of these twenty
thousand, I venture to say more voted for Ullman and Scroggs than for
Clark and Raymond; the _Tribune_ (also because of its character) has
but eight thousand subscribers within the same radius, and I venture
to say that of its habitual readers, nine-tenths voted for Clark and
Raymond--very few for Ullman and Scroggs. I had to bear the brunt of
the contest....

"Governor Seward, I know that some of your most cherished friends
think me a great obstacle to your advancement; that John Schoolcraft,
for one, insists that you and Weed should not be identified with me. I
trust, after a time, you will not be. I trust I shall never be found
in opposition to you; I have no further wish than to glide out of the
newspaper world as quietly and as speedily as possible, join my family
in Europe, and, if possible, stay there quite a time--long enough to
cool my fevered brain and renovate my over-tasked energies. All I ask
is that we shall be counted even on the morning after the first
Tuesday in February, as aforesaid, and that I may thereafter take such
course as seems best without reference to the past.

"You have done me acts of valued kindness in the line of your
profession; let me close with the assurance that these will ever be
gratefully remembered by Yours, Horace Greeley."[574]

[Footnote 574: New York _Tribune_, June 14, 1860.]

At the time Seward received this letter he regarded it as only a
passing cloud-shadow. "To-day I have a long letter from Greeley, full
of sharp, pricking thorns," he wrote Weed. "I judge, as we might
indeed well know from his nobleness of disposition, that he has no
idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see
him so unhappy. Will there be a vacancy in the Board of Regents this
winter? Could one be made at the close of the session? Could he have
it? Raymond's nomination and ele