that would challenge the approval of
the world. This was due not less to ourselves than to the Union men of
Southern States, who, with equal patriotism and more of sacrifice,
amidst the pitiless peltings of the disunion storm, sought, like the
dove sent out from the ark, a dry spot on which to set their
feet."[629]

[Footnote 628: _Ibid._, p. 261.]

[Footnote 629: Albany _Evening Journal_, January 9, 1861.]

Weed's sincerity remained unquestioned, and his opinion, so ardently
supported outside his party, would probably have had weight within his
party under other conditions; but the President-elect, with his mind
inflexibly made up on the question of extending slavery into the
territories, refused to yield the cardinal principle of the Chicago
platform. "Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the
extension of slavery," he wrote, December 11, to William Kellogg, a
member of Congress from Illinois. "The instant you do, they have us
under again; all our labour is lost, and sooner or later must be done
over.... The tug has to come, and better now than later. You know I
think the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be
enforced--to put it in its mildest form, ought not to be
resisted."[630] Two days later, in a letter to E.B. Washburne, also an
Illinois member of Congress, he objected to the scheme for restoring
the Missouri Compromise line. "Let that be done and immediately
filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold
firm as a chain of steel."[631] To Weed himself, on December 17, he
repeated the same idea in almost the identical language.[632]

[Footnote 630: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 259.]

[Footnote 631: _Ibid._, Vol. 3, p. 259.]

[Footnote 632: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2,
pp. 310, 311.]

Thurlow Weed was a journalist of pre-eminent ability, and, although a
strenuous, hard hitter, who gave everybody as much sport as he wanted,
he was a fair fighter, whom the bitterest critics of the radical
Republican press united in praising for his consistency; but his
epigrams and incisive arguments, sending a vibrating note of
earnestness across the Alleghanies, could not move the modest and, as
yet, unknown man of the West, who, unswayed by the fears of Wall
Street, and the teachings of the great Whig compromisers, saw with a
statesman's clearness the principle that explained the reason for his
party's existence.

CH