l by jury, of abolishing distinctions in
constitutional rights founded solely on complexion, and of repealing
the law authorising the importation of slaves into the State and their
detention as such during a period of nine months. Seward avowed his
firm faith in trial by jury and his opposition to all "human bondage,"
but he declined making ante-election pledges. He preferred to wait, he
said, until each case came before him for decision. Seward undoubtedly
took the wise course; but he did not satisfy the extremists
represented by Smith, and many of the Whig leaders became
panic-stricken. "The Philistines are upon us," wrote Millard Fillmore,
who was canvassing the State. "I now regard all as lost irrevocably.
We shall never be able to burst the withes. Thank God, I can endure it
as long as they, but I am sick of our Whig party. It can never be in
the ascendant."[295]

[Footnote 295: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
60.]

Francis Granger was no less alarmed. He estimated the Abolitionist
vote at twenty thousand, "and before the grand contest of 1840," he
wrote Weed, "they will control one-fourth the votes of the State. They
are engaged in it with the same honest purpose that governed the great
mass of Anti-Masons."[296] The young candidate at Auburn was also in
despair. "I fear the State is lost," he wrote Weed on November 4.
"This conclusion was forced upon me strongly by news from the southern
tier of counties, and is confirmed by an analogy in Ohio. But I will
not stop to reason on the causes. Your own sagacity has doubtless
often considered them earlier and more forcibly than mine."[297]

[Footnote 296: _Ibid._, p. 61.]

[Footnote 297: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 1, p. 61.]

But Horace Greeley did not share these gloomy forebodings. He was then
engaged in editing the _Jeffersonian_, a weekly journal of eight
pages, which had been established in February solely as a campaign
newspaper. His regular business was the publication of the _New
Yorker_, a journal of literature and general intelligence. During the
campaign he consented to spend two days of each week at Albany making
up the _Jeffersonian_, which was issued from the office of the
_Evening Journal_, and he was doing this work with the indefatigable
industry and marvellous ability that marked his character.

Greeley had battled for a place in the world after the manner of
Thurlow Weed. He was born on a New Hampshire far