ply the popular demand, Jackson's
proclamation against the nullifiers, written by Edward Livingston, a
native of New York, then secretary of state, was published in a cheap
and convenient edition. To the readers of such literature Greeley's
peaceable secession seemed like the erratic policy of an eccentric
thinker, and its promulgation, especially when it began giving comfort
and encouragement to the South, contributed not a little to the defeat
of its author for the United States Senate in the following February.

[Footnote 604: _Ibid._, November 30. "In so far as the Free States are
concerned," he said, "I hold that it will be an advantage for the
South to go off."]

[Footnote 605: _The Liberator_, November and December.]

Thurlow Weed also had a plan, which quickly attracted the attention of
people in the South as well as in the North. He held that suggestions
of compromise which the South could accept might be proposed without
dishonour to the victors in the last election, and, in several
carefully written editorials in the _Evening Journal_, he argued in
favour of restoring the old line of the Missouri Compromise, and of
substituting for the fugitive slave act, payment for rescued slaves by
the counties in which the violation of law occurred. "When we refer,
as we often do, triumphantly to the example of England," he said, "we
are prone to forget that emancipation and compensation were provisions
of the same act of Parliament."[606]

[Footnote 606: Albany _Evening Journal_, November 26, 1860.]

Weed was now sixty-three years of age--not an old man, and of little
less energy than in 1824, when he drove about the State in his first
encounter with Martin Van Buren. The success of the views he had
fearlessly maintained, in defiance of menacing opponents, had been
achieved in full measure, and he had reason to be proud of his
conspicuous part in the result; but now, in the presence of secession
which threatened the country because of that success, he seemed
suddenly to revolt against the policy he himself had fostered. As his
biographer expressed it, "he cast aside the weapons which none could
wield so well,"[607] and, betraying the influences of his early
training under the great Whig leaders, began to show his love for the
Union after the manner of Clay and Webster.

[Footnote 607: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
306.]

Weed outlined his policy with rare skill, hoping that the discussio