measure, given up his damaging doctrine of
peaceable secession, and accepted the "no compromise" policy, laid
down by Benjamin F. Wade, as "the only true, the only honest, the only
safe doctrine."[624] It was necessary to Greeley's position just then,
and to the stage of development which his candidacy had reached, that
he should oppose Weed's compromise. On the 22d of December, therefore,
he wrote the President-elect: "I fear nothing, care for nothing, but
another disgraceful backdown of the free States. That is the only real
danger. Let the Union slide--it may be reconstructed; let Presidents
be assassinated--we can elect more; let the Republicans be defeated
and crushed--we shall rise again. But another nasty compromise,
whereby everything is conceded and nothing secured, will so thoroughly
disgrace and humiliate us that we can never raise our heads, and this
country becomes a second edition of the Barbary States, as they were
sixty years ago. 'Take any form but that.'"[625] On the same day the
_Tribune_ announced that "Mr. Lincoln is utterly opposed to any
concession or compromise that shall yield one iota of the position
occupied by the Republican party on the subject of slavery in the
territories, and that he stands now, as he stood in May last, when he
accepted the nomination for the Presidency, square upon the Chicago
platform."[626] Thus Lincoln had reassured Greeley's shrinking faith,
and thenceforward his powerful journal took a more healthy and hopeful
tone.[627]

[Footnote 624: New York _Tribune_, December 19, 1860.]

[Footnote 625: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 258.]

[Footnote 626: New York _Tribune_, December 22, 1860.]

[Footnote 627: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 258.]

Meantime, Weed laboured for the Crittenden compromise. He went to
Washington, interviewed Republican members of Congress, and finally
visited Lincoln at Springfield. Tickling the ear with a pleasing
sentiment and alliteration, he wanted Republicans, he said, "to meet
secession as patriots and not as partisans."[628] He especially urged
forbearance and concession out of consideration for Union men in
Southern States. "Apprehending that we should be called upon to test
the strength of the Government," he wrote, on January 9, 1861, "we
saw, what is even more apparent now, that the effort would tax all its
faculties and strain all its energies. Hence our desire before the
trial came to make up a record