te the three parties against him. The Hards resisted the
movement, but many merchants and capitalists of New York City,
apprehensive of the dissolution of the Union if Lincoln were elected,
and promising large sums of money to the campaign, forced the
substitution of seven Breckenridge electors in place of as many
Douglas supporters, giving Bell ten, Breckenridge seven, and Douglas
eighteen. "It is understood," said the _Tribune_, "that four nabobs
have already subscribed twenty-five thousand dollars each, and that
one million is to be raised."[588]

[Footnote 588: New York _Tribune_, October 19, 1860.]

All this disturbed Lincoln. "I think there will be the most
extraordinary effort ever made to carry New York for Douglas," he
wrote Weed on August 17. "You and all others who write me from your
State think the effort cannot succeed, and I hope you are right.
Still, it will require close watching and great efforts on the other
side."[589] After fusion did succeed, the Republican managers found
encouragement in the fact that a majority of the Americans in the
western part of the State,[590] following the lead of Putnam,
belonged to the party of Lincoln, while the Germans gave comforting
evidence of their support. On his return from the West Seward assured
Lincoln "that this State will redeem all the pledges we have
made."[591] Then came the October verdict from Pennsylvania and
Indiana. "Emancipation or revolution is now upon us," said the
Charleston _Mercury_.[592] Yet the hope of the New York fusionists,
encouraged by a stock panic in Wall Street and by the unconcealed
statement of Howell Cobb of Georgia, then secretary of the treasury,
that Lincoln's election would be followed by disunion and a serious
derangement of the financial interests of the country, kept the Empire
State violently excited. It was reported in Southern newspapers that
William B. Astor had contributed one million of dollars in aid of the
fusion ticket.[593] It was a formidable combination of elements.
Heretofore the Republican party had defeated them separately--now it
met them as a united whole, when antagonisms, ceasing to be those of
rational debate, had become those of fierce and furious passion.
Greeley pronounced it "a struggle as intense, as vehement, and as
energetic, as had ever been known," in New York.[594] Yet Thurlow
Weed's confidence never wavered. "The fusion leaders have largely
increased their fund," he wrote Lincoln, three days