Though Seward and other buoyant natures felt that the crisis had passed with the election,less volatile people held the opposite view.Men who had never before taken seriously the Southern threats of disunion had waked suddenly to a terrified consciousness that they were in for it.In their blindness to realities earlier in the year,they were like that brilliant host of camp followers which,as Thackeray puts it,led the army of Wellington dancing and feasting to the very brink of Waterloo.And now the day of reckoning had come.An emotional reaction carried them from one extreme to the other;from self-sufficient disregard of their adversaries to an almost self-abasing regard.
The very type of these people and of their reaction was Horace Greeley.He was destined many times to make plain that he lived mainly in his sensibilities;that,in his kaleidoscopic vision,the pattern of the world could be red and yellow and green today,and orange and purple and blue tomorrow.To descend from a pinnacle of self-complacency into a desolating abyss of panic,was as easy for Greeley as it is--in the vulgar but pointed American phrase--to roll off a log.A few days after the election,Greeley had rolled off his log.He was wallowing in panic.He began to scream editorially.The Southern extremists were terribly in earnest;if they wanted to go,go they would,and go they should.But foolish Northerners would be sure to talk war and the retaining of the South in the Union by force:it must not be;what was the Union compared with bloodshed?There must be no war--no war.Such was Greeley's terrified--appeal to the North.A few weeks after the election he printed his famous editorial denouncing the idea of a Union pinned together by bayonets.He followed up with another startling concession to his fears:the South had as good cause for leaving the Union as the colonies had for leaving the British Empire.A little later,he formulated his ultimate conclusion,--which like many of his ultimates proved to be transitory,--and declared that if any group of Southern States "choose to form an independent nation,they have a clear moral right to do so,"and pledging himself and his followers to do "our best to forward their views.
Greeley wielded through The Tribune more influence,perhaps,than was possessed by any other Republican with the single exception of Lincoln.His newspaper constituency was enormous,and the relation between the leader and the led was unusually close.He was both oracle and barometer.As a symptom of the Republican panic,as a cause increasing that panic,he was of first importance.
Meanwhile Congress had met.And at once,the most characteristic peculiarity of the moment was again made emphatic.The popular majorities and the political machines did not coincide.Both in the North and in the South a minority held the situation in the hollow of its hand.The Breckinridge Democrats,despite their repudiation in the presidential vote,included so many of the Southern politicians,they were so well organized,they had scored such a menacing victory with the aid of Rhett in South Carolina,they had played so skilfully on the fears of the South at large,their leaders were such skilled managers,that they were able to continue for the moment the recognized spokesmen of the South at Washington.They lost no time defining their position.If the Union were not to be sundered,the Republicans must pledge themselves to a new and extensive compromise;it must be far different from those historic compromises that had preceded it.Three features must characterize any new agreement:The South must be dealt with as a unit;it must be given a "sphere of influence"--to use our modern term--which would fully satisfy all its impulses of expansion;and in that sphere,every question of slavery must be left entirely,forever,to local action.In a word,they demanded for the South what today would be described as a "dominion"status.Therefore,they insisted that the party which had captured the Northern political machine should formulate its reply to these demands.They gave notice that they would not discuss individual schemes,but only such as the victorious Republicans might officially present.Thus the national crisis became a party crisis.What could the Republicans among themselves agree to propose?
The central figure of the crisis seemed at first to be the brilliant Republican Senator from New York.Seward thought he understood the South,and what was still more important,human nature.Though he echoed Greeley's cry for peace--translating his passionate hysteria into the polished cynicism of a diplomat who had been known to deny that he was ever entirely serious-he scoffed at Greeley's fears.If the South had not voted lack of confidence in the Breckinridge crowd,what had it voted?If the Breckinridge leaders weren't maneuvering to save their faces,what could they be accused of doing?If Seward,the Republican man of genius,couldn't see through all that,couldn't devise a way to help them save their faces,what was the use in being a brilliant politician?
Jauntily self-complacent,as confident of himself as if Rome were burning and he the garlanded fiddler,Seward braced himself for the task of recreating the Union.
