onger Union sentiment were needed, the remarks
of Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, in disclosing the attitude of his party,
supplied it. "The election of Lincoln," he said, "must be regarded as
the triumph of principles cherished in the hearts of the people of the
free States. Chief among these principles is the restriction of
slavery within State limits; not war upon slavery within those limits,
but fixed opposition to its extension beyond them. By a fair and
unquestionable majority we have secured that triumph. Do you think
we, who represent this majority, will throw it away? Do you think the
people would sustain us if we undertook to throw it away?"[656]

[Footnote 655: Lucius E. Chittenden, _Report of Proceedings of Peace
Conference_, pp. 157, 170, 303, 428.]

[Footnote 656: Lucius E. Chittenden, _Report of Proceedings of Peace
Conference_, p. 304.]

After three weeks of such talk, even Virginia, whose share in forming
the Union exceeded that of any other State, manifested its
discouragement by repudiating the proposed amendment as an
insufficient guarantee for bringing back the cotton States or holding
the border States. When, finally, on March 4, the result of the
conference was offered in the United States Senate, only seven votes
were cast in its favour. So faded and died the last great effort for
compromise and peace. For months it must have been apparent to every
one that the party of Lincoln would not yield the cornerstone of its
principles. It desired peace, was quick to co-operate, and ready to
conciliate, but its purpose to preserve free territory for free labour
remained fixed and unalterable.

CHAPTER XXVII

WEED'S REVENGE UPON GREELEY

1861

In the winter of 1860-61, while the country was drifting into civil
war, a desperate struggle was going on at Albany to elect a United
States senator in place of William H. Seward, whose term expired on
the fourth of March. After the defeat of the Senator at Chicago,
sentiment settled upon his return to Washington; but when Lincoln
offered him the position of secretary of state, Thurlow Weed announced
William M. Evarts as his candidate for the United States Senate.
Evarts was now forty-three years of age. Born in Boston, a graduate of
Yale, and of the Harvard law school, he had been a successful lawyer
at the New York bar for twenty years. Union College had conferred upon
him, in 1857, the degree of Doctor of Laws, and the rare ability and
marvellous persi