tional conventions; Greeley preached to the whole
country, sweeping along like a prairie fire and converting men to his
views as easily as steel filings are attracted to the magnet. From the
outset he was above dictation. He lacked judgment, and at times
greatly grieved the friends who were willing to follow him through
fire and flood; but once his mind was made up he surrendered his
understanding, his consciousness of convictions, of duty, and of
public good, to no man or set of men. "I trust we can never be
enemies," he once wrote Weed, "but better anything than I should feel
the weight of chains about my neck, that I should write and act with
an eye to any man's pleasure, rather than to the highest good."[299]

[Footnote 299: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.
97.]

As the editor of the _Jeffersonian_, which now quickly won a multitude
of readers, he did his work with marked ability, discussing measures
calmly and forcibly, and with an influence that baffled his opponents
and surprised his friends. Greeley seems never to have been an
immature writer. His felicity of expression and ability to shade
thought, with a power of appeal and invective that belongs to
experience and mature age, came to him, as they did to Hamilton,
before he was out of his teens, and whether he was right or whether he
was wrong, he was always the most interesting, always the most
commanding figure in American journalism in the epoch-making political
controversies of his day.

The Whigs thought it a happy omen that election day, November 7, came
this year on the anniversary of General Harrison's victory at
Tippecanoe. As the returns came in Seward's friends grew more elated,
and on Saturday, the 11th, Weed covered the entire first page of the
_Evening Journal_ with the picture of an eagle, having outspread wings
and bearing in its beak the word "Victory." It was the first
appearance in politics of this American bird, which was destined to
play a part in all future celebrations of the kind. The completed
returns showed that the Whigs had elected Seward and Bradish by ten
thousand four hundred and twenty-one majority,[300] five of the eight
senators, and nearly two-thirds of the assemblymen. "Well, dear
Seward," wrote Weed, "we are victorious; God be thanked--gratefully
and devoutly thanked."[301] Seward was no less affected. "It is a
fearful post I have coveted," he wrote; "I shudder at my temerity....
Indeed, I feel jus