m the _Journal_, Weed was sixty-six
years of age, able-bodied, rich, independent, and satisfied if not
surfeited. "So far as all things personal are concerned," he said, "my
work is done."[880] Yet a trace of unhappiness revealed itself.
Perfect peace did not come with the possession of wealth.[881]
Moreover, his political course had grieved and separated friends. For
thirty years he looked forward with pleasurable emotions to the time
when, released from the cares of journalism, he might return to
Rochester, spending his remaining days on a farm, in the suburbs of
that city, near the banks of the Genesee River; but in 1863 he found
his old friends so hostile, charging him with the defeat of Wadsworth,
that he abandoned the project and sought a home in New York.[882]

[Footnote 880: Albany _Evening Journal_, January 28, 1863.]

[Footnote 881: "Let it pass whether or not the editor of the _Tribune_
has been intensely ambitious for office. It would have been a blessed
thing for the country if the editor of the _Journal_ had been impelled
by the same passion. For avarice is more ignoble than ambition, and
the craving for jobs has a more corrupting influence, alike on the
individual and the public, than aspiration to office."--New York
_Tribune_, December 12, 1862.]

[Footnote 882: Thurlow Weed, _Autobiography_, pp. 360-361.]

For several years Weed had made his political headquarters in that
city. Indeed, No. 12 Astor House was as famous in its day as 49
Broadway became during the subsequent leadership of Thomas C. Platt.
It was the cradle of the "Amens" forty years before the Fifth Avenue
Hotel became the abode of that remarkable organization. From 1861 to
1865, owing to the enormous political patronage growing out of the
war, the lobbies of the Astor House were crowded with politicians from
all parts of New York, making ingress and egress almost impossible. In
the midst of this throng sat Thurlow Weed, cool and patient,
possessing the keen judgment of men so essential to leadership. "When
I was organizing the Internal Revenue Office in 1862-3," wrote George
S. Boutwell, "Mr. Weed gave me information in regard to candidates for
office in the State of New York, including their relations to the
factions that existed, with as much fairness as he could have
commanded if he had had no relation to either one."[883]

[Footnote 883: George S. Boutwell, _Sixty Years in Public Affairs_,
Vol. 2, p. 207.]

Although opposed to