they were to take no part in the proceedings
unless a majority of the non-slave-holding States were represented.
The appearance of Francis Granger upon the commission was the act of
Thurlow Weed. Granger, happy in his retirement at Canandaigua, had
been out of office and out of politics so many years that, as he said
in a letter to the editor of the _Evening Journal_, "it is with the
greatest repugnance that I think of again appearing before the
public."[642] But Weed urged him, and Granger accepted "the
flattering honour."[643] Thus, after many years of estrangement, the
leader of the Woolies clasped hands again with the chief of the
Silver-Grays.

[Footnote 642: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
317.]

[Footnote 643: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
318.]

Though a trifling event in itself, the detention of thirty-eight boxes
of muskets by the New York police kept the people conscious of the
strained relations between the States. The ownership of the guns, left
for shipment to Savannah, would ordinarily have been promptly settled
in a local court; but the detention now became an affair of national
importance, involving the governors of two States and leading to the
seizure of half a dozen merchant vessels lying peacefully at anchor in
Savannah harbour. Instead of entering the courts, the consignor
telegraphed the consignees of the "seizure," the consignees notified
Governor Brown of Georgia, and the Governor wired Governor Morgan of
New York, demanding their immediate release. Receiving no reply to his
message, Brown, in retaliation, ordered the seizure of all vessels at
Savannah belonging to citizens of New York. Although Governor Morgan
gave the affair no attention beyond advising the vessel owners that
their rights must be prosecuted in the United States courts, the
shipment of the muskets and the release of the vessels soon closed the
incident; but Brown's indecent zeal to give the episode an
international character by forcing into notice the offensive
assumption of an independent sovereignty, had much influence in
hardening the "no compromise" attitude of many Northern people.

Nevertheless, the men of New York who desired peace on any honourable
terms, seemed to grow more earnest as the alarm in the public mind
became more intense. South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Louisiana, and Mississippi had now seceded, and, as a last appeal to
them, a monster and